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The Flame of Happiness 



PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


Copyright, 1924, by 
George W. Jacobs & Company 


fJ 1 - • 


All rights reserved 
Printed in U. S. A. 


DEC -4 1924 ■ 
©Cl A 81 4107 ' 





CONTENTS 


I 


I. 

BARBARA FALLOWS 
St. Agatha’s .... 



9 

II. 

PlNELANDS 

_ 

_ 




III. 

Ruddy 

_ 




42 

IV. 

The South Dormer 

_ 




62 

V. 

Franklin 

. 

• 



73 

VI. 

The High Road 

_ 




100 

VII. 

Jane Treves - 

_ 




120 

VIII. 

The Tower-Room - 

_ 

. 

_ 


138 

IX. 

The Gold Coast - 

_ 

. 

. 


14 7 

X. 

Anne - 

. 

. 

. 

• 

158 

XI. 

Tower-Town - 

. 

_ 

m 

. 

175 

XII. 

Geoffrey 

- 

- 

m 

- 

195 

XIII. 

II 

BARBARA 

St. Agatha’s - 

HALE 


m 


205 

XIV. 

Maple Hill - 

- 

- 

m 

- 

221 

XV. 

Woodlawn 

- 

- 

- 

- 

234 

XVI. 

The Hales 

- 

- 

- 

- 

253 

XVII. 

The County Road - 

- 

- 

- 

- 

282 

XVIII. 

June - 

- 

- 

- 

- 

303 

XIX. 

Miriam - 

- 

- 

- 

- 

321 

XX. 

Dorothea 

- 

- 

- 

- 

336 

XXI. 

The Little House - 

- 

- 

- 

- 

348 












I 

BARBARA FALLOWS 


• I 




The Flame of Happiness 


i 

ST. AGATHA’S 

I 

From the south dormer Barbara could look down on a 
long, still sweep of lawn, splotched with the shadows of 
upstanding trees, and beyond to the asphalt crossing where 
squat, orange cars stopped and ant-like people sprawled out, 
quickly to disappear in the narrow canyons on either side. 
On the ground these canyons became wide streets, walled 
with tall apartment houses; but Barbara cared little for the 
ground aspect of anything. She vastly preferred to view the 
world from her own giddy eyrie where an occasional cloud, 
shining like a great mass of silver, swung overhead and the 
bridal wreath far below seemed to wash up against St. 
Agatha’s gray walls like the crest of a green wave. 

St. Agatha’s was an old-fashioned stone house with three 
tiers of narrow windows on its sides and a fan-shaped bit 
of granite at the top of each. It stood in the center of a 
city block, its lawn an oasis in a desert of asphalt, cars 
clanging past its comers. 

Anne Linton’s favorite legend had it that St. Agatha’s 
really began when Old Langley came back from the Civil 
War, Young Langley with an army surgeon’s kit in his 
trunk and a dream in his heart. And of that dream there 
was first this high house, built far out, away from the noise 
of the city, with an upper room or two made ready for the 
sick . . . and then a wing thrown out here, another 

there, until, as its fame grew and its rooms were crowded, 
the huge pile of a modern hospital reared above the old 
place, fronting the street behind. That was the real St. 


10 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Agatha’s and had been for a decade, but the name was still 
carved in the stone above the old door and there were still 
service rooms in the French basement under the high stoop, 
still dispensaries on the first floor, still the faint, sweetish 
smell of ether always lingering along its halls. 

Anne Linton and Barbara lived high up, under the man¬ 
sard roof above the floor given over to the nurses. There 
were three rooms there, all of them large, built with the 
carelessness of space that characterized the Sixties; but the 
living-room was magnificent with a dark polished floor and 
dormers looking out on the tops of trees. It was a room 
full of soft color. Sunlight pouring through the windows, 
old, faded Persians scattered over the waxed floor, door¬ 
ways fitted with white shelves behind whose glass doors 
there gleamed the Canton blue of china and the silver sheen 
of Sheffield; these were the broad splashes. And there were 
innumerable details: the pillows on the old Chesterfield, the 
glow of firelight behind quaint, imprisoning bars, a blue 
Wedgewood bowl on the table, a delicate Hokusai print 
against a wide light rectangle of wall. 

The south dormer was peculiarly Barbara’s, possessed by 
right of whimsy in days when she could only reach its 
high ledge by inching her small body upward on fat elbows, 
her fat legs dangling. Very early, its seat had been cush¬ 
ioned for her comfort and the wall built out by means of 
narrow bookcases beyond which the low cupboards that 
held her toys projected like the arms of a stately throne. 
Quite often she played it was a throne and she the proud 
Queen Barbara, haughtily rigid on the cretonne cushions. 

But oftener life called to action and the dormer became 
the cab of a locomotive, tearing in a race with death around 
the curves of terrific mountains ... or a lighthouse 
tower above a lonely pinnacle of rock ... or the pilot¬ 
house of a great ship riding a stormy sea. Or even Cleo¬ 
patra’s silk-veiled barge drifting to the murmur of soft viols 
down a gorgeous Nile. At its best, this was a twilight game 
when Barbara lay curled among the cushions and listened 
to Anne’s sweet, thin voice and the tinkle of the piano till, 


ST. AGATHA'S 11 

with drowsiness, the drift of music seemed to come from 
everywhere outside, filling the room and her own soul. 

Before the events which centered in the dormer, Barbara 
remembered little and that dimly. Some insignificant thing 
occurred and there would follow a long phase of emptiness 
before the next instance of note. There was, first of any¬ 
thing, the memory of a white flood over the earth and a 
man’s shadowy figure throwing bits of snow at her against 
a patterned, frosty window. She could not remember his 
features or anything in the room behind her. But she never 
forgot how cold the glass was against her nose. After a 
blank, she recalled a fourth birthday when a swift-moving 
mother-person, all piquant golden lights, counted the years 
on Barbara’s pink fingers . . . one—two—three—four 
. . . and put into her cupped hands afterward, a red 
sandstone vase with a gay red rose toppling over one side. 
Oddly enough as she played with it, she was startled by the 
bitter sound of sobbing behind a door; and stole a glimpse 
through the crack of her mother sitting limp in a chair with 
her head dropped against the wall and a shaft of sunlight 
shimmering across her hair. 

Later, there had been a boat-trip. The boat for which, 
for some reason, she was waiting, was very late and kept 
getting later. “ It will surely be in at ten, madam,” a 
grand, buttony man had said to someone who was with her, 
and afterward, “ It will be in at twelve, madam.” And 
then, a long time after, when Barbara had slept, “ We expect 
the boat at three, madam. I can’t tell you any more.” 
Which was an absurd statement in view of the fact that one 
cannot make three come after twelve no matter how one 
counts one’s fingers. She remembered that journey as the 
first time she had ever known cold or discomfort. Her 
legs dangling over the edge of the bench prickled intolerably 
and her head ached. Whoever it was that was with her 
seemed exceedingly cross, complaining to Barbara in a sharp, 
fretful voice. But at the end there was the delicious safety 
of Anne’s soft arms and St. Agatha’s with its queer odors. 


12 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


II 

If life at St. Agatha's had repressions, Barbara was un¬ 
aware of them. The vague stir always going on about her 
was a commonplace, the movement through the halls, the 
blue-and-white nurses, the gray ambulance clanging in and 
out of the area between the old house and the hospital, the 
dreary, patient groups waiting through the afternoon at the 
door of the dispensary. 

She was not curious about any of these things. Her own 
days were too full for outer curiosities. She could not 
recall her first picture-book or her first scale on the tinkly 
piano . . . things beyond memory belonging to that 
period of vagrant impressions . . . but she was destined 
always to remember the long, happy afternoons when she lay 
prone on the cushioned dormer seat, her heels kicking in the 
air and a heavy book beneath her elbows. 

Books marched in serried ranks across the narrow ends of 
the room or lay piled in its corners while Barbara used the 
shelves as apartment houses for her paper dolls. She 
learned their names, fingering them over some fifty times a 
year . . . taking them down during the week and put¬ 

ting them back Saturdays when the Probationer cleaned in 
case some of '94 dropped in on Sunday. Anne was cross 
instantly if she could not put her hand on the book she 
wanted. They had an initialed order like an Anglo-Saxon 
chant, beginning with the upper left hand corner . . . 

Agassiz, Apuleius, Aristotle, Aurelius; odd names . . . 
Chwang Tsz', Lao-tsze, Maimonides, Voltaire . . . and 
not a picture in one of them. In the inner bookcase, away 
from the windows, there were others, scattered volumes of 
Balzac and Meredith, the novels of Fritz Reuter, plays by 
Shaw, a Rabelais, a joyously fat, illustrated Shakespeare. 

Barbara was enraptured with the pictures in any of them, 
but she had favorites. There was The Ancient Mariner, a 
flat green book with drawings by Dore, severe lines on pages 
whose parchment-like texture was disfigured with brown 
stains, a Gray's Anatomy full of fascinating colored sketches 


13 


ST. AGATHA'S 

of Man's nervous system and digestive apparatus, and a book 
of etchings . . . quaint, impassioned lovers: Antony 

and Cleopatra, Paul and Virginia, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan 
and Isolde, Abelard in his monk’s habit and Heloise. 

Anne had a vast respect for books. Before she learned 
much of anything else, Barbara learned that the wide¬ 
spread covers of a book were an excellent shield against 
the obtrusiveness of errands or conversation or . . . 
sometimes . . . practicing. She could lose most un¬ 
pleasantnesses in the absorption of a story. Opening a book 
was like pushing in at the gate of a fairy garden, full of 
strange things, a refuge from reality. 

On the ground, back of the house was a yard which 
Halforth had insisted should be set apart for her croquet 
and a strip of earth along the fence that was a garden. 
Next to books, Barbara liked gardening. She loved the 
feel of dirt crumbling through her fingers into fine lumps, 
smelling deliciously, and she yearned with a passion almost 
maternal over whatever hardy plants achieved life through 
her somewhat violent ministrations. One summer she grew 
beans which proved a stalwart crop but at the end of Sep¬ 
tember Anne decreed that Barbara alone should shell the 
brown, crisp pods. So the next year before Anne could 
interfere, she persuaded an innocent intern to stake her to 
petunias. . . . 

Petunias grew riotously in patches along the fence. She 
gloated over them pursuing, in an endless game, their elu¬ 
sive perfume, loving them more for their impermanence. 
One afternoon, she saw a small boy looking at her through 
the palings of the iron fence. His name was Luther Carey, 
she remembered. He went to the same Sunday school and 
shared possession of a Beautiful Lady who extravagantly 
admired their boots. He leaned a diminutive bicycle against 
the curb and climbed the palings; and from his perch he 
looked down at her with an evil grin, teeth set hard behind 
his grotesquely stretched lips. 

“ You're a baby,” he sneered at her. “ See th' pretty 
flowers, Baby.” 


14 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS. 

She did not answer. She sat tailor-fashion, her hands at 
her breast, dread growing in her heart because of the gleam 
in his eyes. And while she looked, he leaped down, tram¬ 
pled the soft loam, stamped the delicate plants into the 
earth and tearing them up by the roots, flung them aside. 
For a moment, while that wanton destruction went on be¬ 
fore her eyes, she sat in the silence of despair. The instant 
she found voice and began to scream, he climbed the palings 
like a monkey and pedaled away. She cried a long time, 
lying with her face against the grass. . . . 

But the next day, from the south dormer, she saw him 
slide stealthily around the gate post, staggering under a 
flat of nodding blossoms; and when she arrived to face him 
across her devastated garden, he had no word to say. 
Dogged and silent, he dug and planted, emptying tiny 
earthen pots. Petunias grew in an uneven, drooping row 
and he went off and left them, never having broken silence, 
not even taking the pots. They were hers, those cunning 
things. She sat huddled together, liking Luther, her tongue 
licking into the dimple of her fat knee, her thoughts dream¬ 
ing ... of a house somewhere, sometime, of a garden, 
of nine children set in a stiff row along the baseboard of 
the nursery like papier-mache dolls. 


Ill 

Life with Anne Linton had definite form and substance. 
By the time Barbara was eight and old enough to sit up 
for dinner, all the hours of the day swept upward to that 
climax. She would come hippety-hopping home from 
school to play tag and pull-away with the children who 
lived in the apartment house across the street from St. 
Agatha’s. They were not at all important children, never 
sharply significant, and they changed so often that she 
missed them not at all when they went away and forgot 
them easily and forever. There were always new ones 
drifting in, quite like those who had gone, quite as adequate 


ST. AGATHA’S 15 

to fill in the hour or more that Anne decreed she must be 
out of doors. 

After play, there was practicing, a dreamy time, made 
delicious by the odors of simmering meats and fresh-baked 
breads that floated up the dumb-waiter shaft from the 
kitchen in the basement. Barbara set the slide open the 
moment she came in and hung over the well, inhaling deeply, 
making deductions as to the coming meal; and there were 
breaks in her scales when she stopped to sniff delightedly 
or listen to the cook and her helper quarreling far below, 
their raucous voices faint and gnome-like as if they came 
from deep caves under the earth. 

At half-after six a Probationer came in with the fresh 
linens. The Probationers changed as often as the children 
in the apartments. There was always a new one coming 
unannounced, flatteringly awkward and ill at ease, accepting 
the Lady Barbara's patronage gratefully. She wheeled out 
the drop-leaf table and brought Anne's quaint china from 
the cabinet. Then, almost immediately, there was Anne 
herself, her face cold and sweet for kissing after her tramp 
in the open air, a paper bag from the Woman’s Exchange 
under her arm, a newspaper smelling of fresh print stick¬ 
ing from the pocket of her rough coat. 

Dinner was a ceremonious affair for a tired woman and 
a little girl, though Barbara was grown before she realized 
it. There was the Ceremony of Dressing: 

“ Give me five minutes," Anne would call, “ while I get 
into decent rags," meaning a dull blue foulard with white 
stuff at the throat. 

There was the Ceremony of the Dumbwaiter . . . 
chains creaking in the shaft and compliments exchanged 
hallooingly with Cook who managed the long pull, the strong 
pull that brought the shelf up four floors and better; and 
while Barbara carried the small platters of food to the table 
and sent the waiter down for salad and dessert, Anne 
lighted the lamp and snapped out the gas which every 
Probationer turned to the full above the table. Below 
stairs, in the basement dining-room where the nurses ate. 


16 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

gas glared unrestrained, but in Anne’s domain, light came 
from a tiny Rochester burner set on a high, quaint standard 
of twisted brass, its crimson globe throwing a look of en¬ 
chantment over the white cloth. 

“ And how,” Anne would ask courteously as she helped 
Barbara to a chop and a baked potato, “ did the arithmetic 
go to-day? Still papering rooms? ” 

“ Counting out all the doors and windows. Such a bother, 
Anne-dear.” 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” Anne said impatiently. “If you 
could see the babies in the clinics who are battling to keep 
alive where there aren’t windows enough . . . break 

your heart. I’d have ’em all windows if I had my way. 
No sense in children dying like flies. Spelling?” 

“ I’m going to look up twenty words to-night,” Barbara 
reported importantly. “ And definitions. . . .” 

“ I think I shall call up Grace Allen in the morning. 
Outrageous. Twenty words for a spelling lesson in sixth 
grade. . . .” 

“ Oh, no, Anne. It wasn’t twenty for the lesson . I just 
rather thought I’d do twenty. I told Luther Carey « . .” 

“Are you doing Luther’s lessons ? ” 

“ He’s a dub, Anne, at spelling.” He had so many other 
things worth while, a round, tanned face, crisp, goldeny- 
brown hair, eyebrows drawn straight over his eyes. “ He 
says he could do it easy enough, if he put his mind to it, 
but . . .” 

“ That sounds thoroughly masculine. You’re making a 
fool of yourself. . . .” 

“Who? Me?” 

“ And not quite an honest little fool either. Admit you 
carry half the responsibility when you fall in with a scheme 
like this. Is Luther doing your arithmetic? No. I thought 
not. Don’t blink facts, Barbara. They’re as clean and 
sharp as the edge of a scalpel if you handle them 
right.” 

“What would you do then? Not look up the words? 
Break your promiset ” 


17 


ST. AGATHA’S 

“ My dear, don’t expect me to make decisions for you. 
You’re eleven, aren’t you? Decide what you want to do 
yourself. It’s you who have to take the consequences.” 

“ H’m. . . It was no use to argue. Anne was too 
flatly uncompromising. “ We’ve got to India in g’ography, 
Anne. India, at last.” 

“ India.” Anne’s tired, clever face glowed suddenly. 
“ Bray went out there last year, studying bubonic. Lord, 
how I envied him. . . .” 

“ They go so many places,” Barbara mused. “ Every¬ 
where one happens to be studying. Practically all of you 
in Vienna, and Mason of St. Agatha’s in Alaska and Deman 
in Shanghai. Deman of St. Agatha’s. Are you Linton of 
St. Agatha’s, Anne ? ” 

“ Not yet. Sometime, maybe. House-physician isn’t a 
bad rung to stand on at the bottom of the ladder. ‘ Linton 
of St. Agatha’s. . . .’ Oh . . . me. You know, 
chick, I do believe that if one wants anything terribly 
. . . wants it so hard that one works eight hours a day 
and eight more on top of it and thinks about it most of the 
time . . . call it praying if you like . . . thinks 
about it so that every fiber is stretched to be big enough 
when the time comes ... in the end it’s one’s own. 
Even if you’re a woman, you’re liable to have it in the end. 
Sometime, later on, you’ll understand what I mean.” 

She wanted to understand at once, feeling for meaning 
in Anne’s crisp, vibrant talk. She wanted to anticipate the 
things that Anne promised her when she grew up, the pic¬ 
tures Anne’s terse colorful words sketched for her. Anne 
spoke in metaphor by instinct. She had innumerable droll 
whimsies, never suspected by the every-day folk about St. 
Agatha’s who were accustomed to consider Doctor Linton’s 
brisk efficiency and would have thought the lovely things 
she told Barbara queerly incongruous in the light of her 
professional successes. But they never suspected either 
that under her starched white uniform with its hospital 
smells, she wore the softest and finest of crepe-de-chine 
and batiste made exquisite with her own handiwork. Anne 


18 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Linton loved a needle. There were piles of dainty things, 
orris-scented, hidden in the drawers of an old highboy in 
her room. Afterward, looking back, Barbara came to think 
of Anne’s fancies as just such a stored treasure, shimmer¬ 
ing with beauty, hidden from every eye but hers. 

For an hour after dinner, Anne was Barbara’s. Some 
nights they walked . . . frosty nights under a spread 

of stars with glimpses from the street corners of Arcturus 
and the Pleiades . . . spring nights after a day of rain 
with the lights throwing violet rays along the wet pave¬ 
ments and freshets washing through the gutters and making 
the River Game. 

“ Here is the Mississippi, Anne. Stop a minute. Can 
you feel Indians ? ” 

“ Can’t you ? And Marquette ... La Salle. . . . 
Think of adventuring along the old Mississip’ with La 
Salle. Everything in a wide wilderness. . . .” 

“ We’ll call this the blue Danube here at the fire hydrant; 
but that wide still place at the comer is the Rhine. 

“ * Down the pleasant river and up the slanting hill, 

The echoing chorus sounded through the evening calm 
and still 

Oh . . . dum-dum-dee, dee dum-dum dee . . . 
the yellow sunlight shine 

On the vine-clad hills of Bingen, fair Bingen of the 
Rhine/” 

Once a week they went to a gym class at the Y. W. 
where Barbara was the only one under thirty and beat them 
all on the bars and occasionally there would be an organ 
recital or a Symphony where Anne sat with her gray eyes 
shining and Barbara waited motionless for the feeling that 
the music itself beat through her ... a feeling exactly 
as if she were standing deep in a sunlit lake with the water 
beating against her body. 

Nights when they were at home they either played par- 
chesi or read poetry, Anne with the big “ Library of Poetry 


19 


ST. AGATHA’S 

and Song ” propped on her knee, reading “ Filial and Fra¬ 
ternal Love ” or “ Poems of Peace and War ” and carefully 
avoiding “ Sorrow and Adversity ”; and Barbara with the 
little reddish “ Songs of Three Centuries,” skipping every¬ 
thing when it was her turn to chant “ Lord Ullin’s Daugh¬ 
ter ” and “ Give me three grains of corn, Mother.” 

Then, at the end, the nicest half hour of the day, spent 
on the stair outside the door, when they sat under the 
glaring gaslight of the hall, Anne on the top step, braced 
against the black walnut railing and Barbara two steps 
down, braced sleepily against Anne’s knees, while Anne’s 
fingers worked at the snarls in the short, thick brown mane 
that lay on Barbara’s shoulders; and Anne’s crisp voice 
poured out words from which seemed to rise like an iri¬ 
descent vapor a feeling of remote but exquisite 
beauty. . . . 


IV 

Anne Linton was accustomed to say that she spelt Sunday 
with three R’s. Barbara puzzled over that somewhat cryptic 
orthography until she discovered one day that they were 
really the R’s of other words . . . Rest, Religion, 

Recreation. They rose a trifle late and the morning was 
pleasantly hurried, even the walk to church briskly along 
an avenue where the ungodly thoughtfully raced their fast 
horses at the exact hour when the godly were on their way 
to devotions. If the day were stormy, they jogged along 
the road themselves in a curious be-aproned hansom which 
had a stale, stably odor clinging to the rough texture of its 
cloth cushions. One fitted one’s foot neatly into the cor¬ 
rugated iron square that was a step, avoiding as often as 
one could, the grease on the axle. The driver unknotted 
his reins, arranging them in parallel lines along the horse’s 
back and over the front of the cab, flapped them once, 
clucked loudly. . . . The whole thing cost fifty cents, 
but Anne put her envelope into the plate just the same. 


20 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

At church, they sat far back, partly because Anne said 
she hated the feel of people all around her, but even more 
because Barbara wriggled. Their pew afforded a pitifully 
unadorned view of the congregation. It occurred to 
Barbara often that everyone seemed to put an excess of 
trimming on their Fronts and left Backs unnecessarily plain 
and askew. St. John's was small and there were many 
children. The Palmer girls sat on either side of their 
mother and played tit-tat-toe together during the dull parts 
of the sermon. Luther Carey always sat between, his head 
dropping impartially either way, toward the end of the 
service; but the Taylors who had six and were forced to 
bring a spinster aunt along to space the discipline properly, 
reserved the paternal elbow for the worst of last Sunday. 
It was a fascinating guessing game while the Taylors 
marched down the aisle. 

“ And it cert’nly makes you wish," Barbara said once 
wistfully, “ that we had a bald-headed man for the end of 
our pew.” 

“ But it would come too steep, hiring him for Sundays,” 
Anne objected. “ If you have any imagination at all, it 
seems to me you could pretend one bald-headed man.” 

“ But have I?” 

“You better have. You’ll get mighty little fun out of 
life without.” 

The best of Religion was seeing Mrs. Wood, her head 
devoutly bowed in prayer two rows ahead, giving Nancy, 
her young daughter, cuffs and boxings by the touch system. 
Barbara could have explained that the cause of Nancy's 
misbehavior was a hairpin that Philip Geddes kept in his 
prayer-book to run about her foot between the sole of her 
shoe and the soft upper. It must have tickled intolerably. 
Barbara's own feet curled and quivered at the look of it, 
but she felt that Philip might really be excused for diverting 
himself, inasmuch as he ceased during the Lord’s Prayer 
and, in spite of Nancy's sly kicks, became momentarily as 
pious as the Infant Samuel. She did not like Nancy very 
well. It was rather a Recreation to see her boxed. 


21 


ST. AGATHA’S 

Sunday Dinner, when Anne was off duty, they took out 
in fulfilment of that Beatitude which relates to those who 
hunger and thirst after righteousness. Anne had hosts of 
friends who spelled Sunday as she did and they were often 
dated up weeks ahead. On other Sundays they dined near 
the church at a pompous boarding-house. 

It was rather a bore. The waitress was snuffling and 
flabby-faced, the plates thick, the very salt-shakers stodgy. 
At the table was a fat, pompous man and his fat, pompous 
wife who had a tight mouth. Once when Barbara took the 
last roll on the plate, Mrs. Jennison burst out at her. 

“If you were my little girl you’d be sent from the table 
for that, miss, and swished, too, until you thought twice 
before you sat down.” 

Barbara wondered a trifle over adult pleasantries. “ Isn’t 
it lucky for me that I never could be your little girl ? ” 

“ I think I shall ask that that child apologize,” Mrs. Jen¬ 
nison said in a sword-like way to Anne. 

“ I’m very sorry I took the roll if you wanted it,” Barbara 
said before Anne even spoke to her, “ but I never dreamed 
you did, when you’ve already eaten four.” 

The other two at the table were the Beautiful Lady who 
had once been Barbara’s Sunday-school teacher and her 
husband, a sallow man with pointed mustaches which he 
caressed with satisfied twirls of his thumb and middle 
finger. He told long stories, his soft lips barely moving 
under his mustache, of the cleverly incisive things he had 
said to the manager of the department store where he was 
floor-walker and of how he cut off repartee in underlings 
when they tried that game on him. Barbara was proud to 
bow to so important a person when she met him, clad in 
frock coat and pepper-and-salt trousers, the Saturdays she 
went with Anne to buy her monthly pair of shoes, but she 
did not like him on Sundays. Although thin, he was as 
pompous as Mr. Jennison and he had, besides, a trick of 
inflection that was as nearly like what Mrs. Jennison called 
a “ swishing ” as Barbara could imagine. After one remark 
in a subtle undertone, his wife’s thin, oval face would flush 


22 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

and show white spots at the nostrils. But he Fould not 
stop, of course, for wincing. 

“ Carl dear, please. You misunderstood what.I meant.” 

“ I . . . misunderstood. . . .” 

“ Carl, I am very, very sorry. I beg your par¬ 
don. . . ” 

You could feel Anne quietly growing enraged in the next 
chair. She was apt in the middle of an episode to turn 
her shoulder with an unmistakable air of disdain; and im¬ 
mediately, in return, Carl would manifest disapproval of her 
next remark, interrupting and talking so loud that he 
drowned her voice. “ Impossible Americans . . .” he 

would shout angrily at Mr. Jennison. “ Women with the 
half-baked mind and no sense of proper place. Kirche, 
kinder, kiichen . . . there was someding.” 

Sometimes, after dinner, they walked, following a sys¬ 
tem which Anne said had all the advantages of roulette 
at French Lick and none of the expense ... a matter 
of tossing a penny at every street corner and turning left 
with heads or right with tails, which often resulted in their 
walking round and round the same block while the people 
sitting on the steps grew increasingly astonished . . . 

(one could go home but not cheat). Sometimes, they 
played croquet in the walled yard between the old house 
and the hospital. 

“ No quarter? ” Halforth had asked Anne. Halforth was 
Chief, an iron-gray man tested and unbreakable, with a 
cropped gray mustache and eyes that were mere slits of 
gray light. “ Brutal, Anne Linton. Don’t you ever have 
her win ? ” 

“Not unless she does,” Anne said, whacking a ball firmly 
into the sod. “ Easy enough to learn how to win, Doctor. 
Problem is learning to lose. . . .” 

Halforth repeated the remark that night when ’94 came 
up for tea, or Barbara might not have remembered it. 
’94 was always getting together somewhere for Sunday tea 
with such occasional guests as the Halforths who mixed 
well. When it was her turn, Anne had special cream cakes 


ST. AGATHA’S 23 

baked at the Woman’s Exchange and Barbara passed them 
on the biggest Sheffield plate. They began singing with 
their cups still in their hands, clustering around Torrey at 
the piano . . . hymns, choruses from the Messiah, 

Gaudeamus Igitur. But anything, even as sly a shot as 
Halforth’s would precipitate discussion. They all talked 
tumultuously. Torrey swinging excitedly on the piano stool, 
Ada Shurtleff’s laughter running an obligato through 
his discourse, Marian Gray saying, “ Now, what / 
think. . . It was fun to listen to their voices, beating 
up and up. Suffrage, temperance. (“ Neither ever to be 
hoped for in our day,” Torrey said.) . . . Roosevelt in 
Africa, National Conservation, Maeterlinck, Tuberculosis. 
. . . Barbara could hear them long after she was drift¬ 

ing into drowsiness in her narrow bed. 

A night or two after on the stairs, she made inquiries. 

“ Anne . . . were you ever in love ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ But you didn’t get married ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ H’m. Isn’t that rather curious ? Did you think it was 
nicer not ? ” 

“ No, I didn’t,” Anne said coolly. “ It’s never nicer not. 
No use blinking the facts. But love is one thing and you 
have to have more for marrying. You have to have a 
thing called faith, for instance, and honesty ... or 
Love’s useless. You know,” she went on hurriedly, “one 
of the reasons for studying history is that one comes to 
understand humans after a fashion and human things like 
greed and stupidity and courage. Out of the hardships that 
men and women have gone through together these last hun¬ 
dred thousand years or so, they’ve evolved a loving that’s 
more than . . . than just the passion a man might have 

for any woman. It’s mighty hard to believe that little thing 
sometimes, especially if you’re a hen-medic, poking around 
in people’s lives, but it’s true. It’s one of the things that 
has to be true as you’ll know when you’re older.” 

" Only I [wasn’t meaning history, Anne,” Barbara cut in 


24 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

neatly. “ It was something Torrey said to Mrs. Shurtleff 
. . . about my father and mother.” 

“ Well . . . you know how it is with ’94 here in 
Chicago . . . the salt of the earth and all that but they 

do mix up in each other’s affairs. Torrey, of course, was 
one of the best friends Jim ever had. . . .” 

“ Better than you ? ” 

“Jealous little rat. No. Else Jim would have sent 
Barbara to Torrey to bring up, wouldn’t he? ” 

“ He mightn’t. You were Evelyn’s cousin.” 

“ Yes. I was • . . Evelyn’s cousin.” 

“ Anne . . . didn’t they ? ” 

“What?” 

“ Love each other? ” 

“ Oh, I think so. I believe they did. Yes.” 

“ Then why ? Anne, why do you suppose . . . 

everything happened ? ” 

Even Anne admitted there was no known answer to that. 
Why do people make a mess of life when its years are all 
they have, she asked you. “ Something happened. They 
never said. It’s better that way, Baba. No sense in taking 
out your heart strings and thrumming on them like the 
Harp that once through Tara’s Halls. . . .” 

“ Do you think she loved her other husband, too? After 
she went away ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” Anne said. “ I never saw her after she 
went away. Nor Jim.” 

“ From books,” Barbara mused, “ you’d think that love 
was all the happiness there is. But Torrey said . . .” 

“Change the subject, will you, chick? I’m getting a bit 
bored.” 

“ H’m. What shall I change to ? What is happiness, 
Anne ? Do you ever think about it ? ” 

She realized after a moment that she had said something 
pointed. There was a long pause. Anne brushed, parted 
the silky brown hair swiftly into strands, folded a narrow 
rag around the end of each, rolled them smoothly one by 
one into a wreath of brown and white knobs encircling 


25 


ST. AGATHA’S 

Barbara’s head. Even when she had finished she sat, 
hunched forward, her arms crossed on her knees, her gray 
eyes traveling into the dusk of the lower hall. Her hands 
opened once and closed. They were most expressive hands 
with a trick of revealing emotions that Anne’s resolutely 
controlled face was schooled never to obtrude on the ob¬ 
server. 

“ I always think of happiness as flame,” she said slowly 
at last. “ I always have, all my life. It’s just a fancy of 
mine but it’s clear as anything. Fire ... a lighted 
fire throwing a gleam across the grayest day ... an 
inextinguishable fire. Because, however it dies down, you 
can find embers at the heart of its ashes and build it up 
again with what you have. Almost without knowing it, al¬ 
most in spite of yourself, you do just that. You take what 
you have . . . love, of course, if you’re one of the 

lucky ones who have it, or friendship like those that have 
lasted all these years for ’94 . . . anything that means 

happiness for you. Sometimes the fuel that comes to your 
hand is the joy you have in your own mind ... in 
learning and thinking, in books and plays and music . . . 

clear flames, Baba. Sometimes it’s religion. Most people, 
after they’re older, keep it burning with work, hard, clean 
work and the little things that make it crackle . . . jokes 
and nonsense and bits of singing and laughter. Now and 
again, of course, you pile it with the driftwood of your 
ambitions and your dreams and watch the flames sheet up 
and up. It’s a fire that costs you something . . . hap¬ 

piness; but you keep it going. As you keep life going, I 
suppose . . . instinct to preserve what’s yours. It’s 

easy enough to run a simile into the ground. I was talking 
to myself, really. . . . I’m an incorrigible old senti¬ 

mentalist, chick. You don’t have to remember a word of it.” 

“ I do, too,” Barbara said stubbornly. “ I want to remem¬ 
ber it.” 

She remembered it all the next day. From the south 
dormer, as the drizzling afternoon darkened, she watched 
the flames leaping behind their prison bars of brass and 


26 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

throwing a gleam into the November day. She could half¬ 
close her eyes and, looking through her lashes, make the 
fire mist and dance . . . heart flames of purple breaking 
into violet and rose, sheeting up and up into the palest gold. 
Watching it, she felt a curious undercurrent of expectation* 
of pleasure. 


V 

She was fifteen before a ripple stirred the placid surface 
of that life at St. Agatha’s with Anne. At fifteen she was 
a sophomore in High, with Luther Carey sitting across the 
aisle and carrying her books when she pointed out to him 
that her company was certainly worth something. They 
were in the same dancing class, too . . . Misses’ and 

Masters’, Friday nights. Luther annoyed her frightfully 
trying to trip her when she danced with him; but they 
danced together frequently, nevertheless. He slid half 
across the floor to choose her when it was Masters’ and 
Barbara chose him back politely when the choice was 
Misses’. If she didn’t she heard from him going home. 

Luther and Phil Geddes rode to school on wheels, and 
it almost always happened that, when Barbara came down 
the steps at one-fifteen, they were just mounting at the curb, 
making false starts, scuffling, threatening one another with 
their handle-bars; and Luther would look around casually, 
poking his head forward. 

“ That you, Baba? Going home? ” 

“ Never,” Barbara would say in a tone of amazement. 
“ Why should I be going home? ” 

“ Come on, if you’re coming. No sense dawdling all 
night.” 

“ I thought you’d gone a long time ago. How do 
you . . 

“ Hatta see a fella. Come on.” 

They moved slowly along the street, Philip and Nancy 
behind them, the boys riding with one foot on the curb. 


ST. AGATHA’S 27 

keeping their wheels upright by an occasional manipulation 
of the pedals. They had the appearance of merely mo¬ 
mentary lingering as if at any instant they were pushing 
off and away. 

“ Whatcha dawdling for, Baba? Think I’m going to 
wait all night ? ” 

“ You don’t have to wait one minute. Go on . . . 
hurry up.” 

“ Generous helping of tongue-and-sauce. . . 

It was the way they talked together. Even when they 
weren’t actually quarreling, which happened on an average 
of twice a week, they said things that sounded like quarrel¬ 
ing, said them over and over. There were times when 
Barbara flung out at him, when he spoiled everything with 
his sulkiness. Still it was comfortable together. She 
seemed to have known him always . . . ever since the 

days of the petunia bed. She liked him and Luther liked 
her. They understood each other. 

“ Nobody’s asking you to wait, Luther.” 

“ That’s no news.” He had a darkly radiant, invincibly 
attractive smile. “ I know that.” 

“ Ever. Not for one minute.” 

“ Sure. I never have to speak to you if I won’t want.” 

“ Much I’d care.” 

“ Much I’d care, either. Well, slow-poke, whatcha 
dawdling for ? Are you coming or ain’t you ? ” 

But suddenly St. Agatha’s became a horror and the High, 
the wide streets, the rush and bustle of the avenue with its 
scream of cars and rattle of trucks, a Via Dolorosa too 
dreadful to be borne. Because of Luther. 

Barbara was walking laggingly from school. Luther had 
been kept in and she had almost reached St. Agatha’s when 
she saw him, sliding through the thick of the traffic, hurry¬ 
ing, measuring, making distance to meet her at the corner 
before she crossed the street. She thrilled a little at his 
cleverness in avoiding a passing street-car and saw . . . 

the tenth of a second before Luther did . . . the truck 

that swept around its end.. She saw Luther s . » 


28 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Luther . . . staring up at her with terror drawing down 

like a grotesque mask over the horrible fixed smile on his 
face . . . with the stricken eyes of an animal in agony 

. . . heard a hoarse, rasping scream and her own voice 

above it, screaming, screaming . . . heard the clang of 

the gong as St. Agatha’s gray ambulance swept out of the 
courtyard opposite, saw faces crowding about them . . . 

faces everywhere. 

She picked up his cap when the ambulance backed across 
the street and followed, numb with fear. Something 
clutched at her throat and weighted her limbs like lead. 
The wide doorway took on a strange aspect and the sweet¬ 
ish, familiar odor in the hall turned her sick. She went 
through the courtyard door and across the croquet-ground 
to the main building, finding the room to which they had 
taken him, through some unnamed instinct. She spoke to 
no one and, in the confusion, she was quite unnoticed. She 
sat down on the floor of the hall, outside the door, hugging 
his cap against her beneath her hands. People passed . . . 
the Senior intern and an orderly . . . two nurses, one 

an old Probationer whom she knew, the other carrying a 
curiously shaped basin . . . the Careys, walking very 

fast, almost running, Mrs. Carey’s face drawn and the cor¬ 
ners of her mouth sucked in. Barbara turned her head 
away against the wall, but it did not matter. The Careys 
did not see her. 

After the Careys, Anne. On Anne’s heels, Doctor Hal- 
forth. Barbara’s heart gave a great leap of joy. Here was 
help. Here was Anne . . . and Halforth. Every¬ 

thing would be all right. Halforth was there and Halforth 
was the greatest surgeon. They had needed Halforth and 
Anne. . . . And on that surge of tumultuous joy, there 

fell the sound of a woman’s weeping, desperate, passionate 
weeping that made Barbara cower away, covering her lips. 

Afterward, sitting on the Chesterfield, the cleanly odor of 
Anne’s hospital uniform was nauseating. 

“ I can’t stand it, Anne. I cannot bear it.” 

“ I know, dear.” Looking up she could see little white 


ST. AGATHA’S 29 

lines about Anne's mouth. “ Only . . . we do help so 
many." 

“ You didn't help him. You failed. You failed. You 
don’t think of it as I do." 

Anne’s hands clenched at that cry. “ Oh, Barbara . . ." 

“ It’s just another accident to you. They’re always here 
. . . all the time, night and day. This place is full of 
pain." 

“ Pain is everywhere," Anne said steadily, “ and here we 
try to ease it." 

“ I don’t want to live here. I can’t stand it. These gray 
stone buildings with the pain all inside." 

“ I . . . know. But crying’s no use, dear. Listen. 

Perhaps we’d better be thinking of plans to ... to get 
you away. It might be best. We can talk it over. You’re 
old enough to go away. I could send you up to Pine- 
lands." 

Pinelands. A boarding-school. The word took her back 
behind the wall of books, defense against all realities and 
into her dim garden of make-believe. She had read innu¬ 
merable stories about boarding-schools. There would be 
girls, there . . . games, gym, midnight spreads . . . 

just girls. 

“ Not just girls," Anne explained. “ It’s an Academy, 
Baba . . . co-educational. It’s a good school and not 

expensive." 

“ As if expense mattered. I’ve my own income, haven’t 
I?" 

“ But not a very big income. You must be careful, you 
know." That was Anne all over, preaching economy, 
eternally at one’s elbow. Was Anne stingy? “You must 
be careful, Barbara." 

“ Of course. I’ll love it, Anne. It will be so good to 
get away.” 

“ Will it ? Still . . . we’ve had good times together, 

haven’t we ? . . . all these years since you were five.” 

They sat a long time on the Chesterfield in the wide, 
shabby room, Anne’s arms held her close, Anne’s cool 


30 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

hands smoothed her hot cheeks and a delicious drowsiness 
stole in upon her. After a while she heard Anne’s voice 
as if from a great distance. 

“ It’s . . . hard, letting you go.” 


II 


PINELANDS 

I 

Pinelands was fifty miles from Chicago. The great 
stretch of sloping meadow-land, fringed with tall pines and 
facing across the curve of a narrow valley, a semicircle of 
wooded hills, had cost its Founder every penny of his in¬ 
heritance and brought him from his beloved New England 
to spend a bitter half-century in the wilderness. He was 
accustomed to mention his mortgages in public prayer, giv¬ 
ing thanks to the Almighty that Providence in its own good 
time would deliver him and his folly alike into oblivion. 

But the school never closed its doors as did so many in 
the middle-west, leaving a stark building to rot on a fine 
hillside; and within ten years after the Founder's death, 
fattening on sectarian endowment, it began an era of pros¬ 
perity, departing from the austerity of its early years in a 
fashion calculated to make the Founder himself one of the 
liveliest corpses underground. 

It was a hodge-podge of borrowings . . . mostly 
from the eastern colleges represented on the faculty. It 
borrowed its plan, building a terrace on the crest of the 
slope with shallow steps and a background of whitewashed 
brick buildings; devising arched vistas between the build¬ 
ings into a quiet Quad; achieving a Bowl for athletics so 
large that it competed with near-by country colleges; dedi¬ 
cating a drill-ground to the alumni who had served in the 
Spanish War; landscaping the lawn and making a sweep¬ 
ing drive to the highway beyond its ornate iron gates. It 
borrowed its curriculum. It borrowed customs and cere¬ 
monials, designed to give Pinelands the proper aging of 
tradition, much as if there could be borrowed nonchalantly, 


32 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

the savor of old wine. The year was crowded with festivi¬ 
ties from Hill-Day in the fall to the last gala-week in June. 

Barbara was at Pinelands two years. She roomed alone 
contentedly in a dun-colored little room as empty and or¬ 
dered as a nun’s cell. The other girls rarely came there. 
They were older than she and at best served as dancing 
partners in the parlors after dinner or feeders to her in¬ 
tense delight in basket-ball and hockey; at the worst they 
closed in upon her in the dreadful proximity of meal-time, 
chattering artificially under the direction of a teacher, their 
jaws moving in rhythmical mastication as regular as if it 
had been measured by a metronome. 

It was not like the boarding-schools of books. The days 
were incredibly hurried. Like her pocket money, the hours 
slipped away with inexplicable swiftness. There was never 
time, it seemed, for the thousand and one delights she tried 
to slip into the scheduled routine. She never found leisure 
to wing away on dreaming fancies, to improvise the fan¬ 
tasies that teased her fingers during practice hours, to plunge 
deep into the rapturous effacement of a book. Someone 
came to take over the bench in the music-room; or a bell 
clanged interrupting her thoughts. 

Music was the most satisfactory of her lessons. Those 
were the years when she dreamed of being a world-famous 
pianist . . . center of a dim hall, sharp light falling 

about her as she stood in a red satin gown acknowledging 
the baskets of roses that were being handed to her in a 
steady succession over the footlights. She practiced these 
acknowledgments ... a court curtsey, kicking her 
train, backing three steps, another curtsey . . . much 

of the time when she should have been working at difficult 
passages. 

And, from one day’s end to another, she was late. She 
never roused from the delicious after-rising-bell drowsiness 
to reach the breakfast table with the girls from her floor. 
She never put down the absorbing story quite in time to 
finish her dusting and bed-making before chapel . . . 

was never ready for the afternoon walk, two and two, 


PINELANDS 33 

around the park and down the road . . . stayed in the 
gym, practicing basket-shots till she was tardy for evening 
dinner. She sulked over the stupid hours given to penances. 
“ But it is your own fault , Barbara,” Miss Haynes fretted 
helplessly. She was a dark, sallow, little woman with a 
smile that, tilting the corners of her mouth, vanished after 
the briefest instant and left it primly pursed. “ I don’t 
know what to say I’m sure. You can move like the wind 
when you wish. You’ve no excuse for indolence, Barbara, 
no excuse at all. . . .” 

In the year when pageantry was at its height, Pinelands 
gave a pageant. It was a thing compounded of history and 
tradition, symbolism and college spirit. A confused thing, 
having elements of beauty. 

On the program Barbara Fallows figured as The Inter¬ 
preter. 

II 

The hum along the terrace had not quite died when she 
began the prologue and the moment she finished it was re¬ 
sumed with a rustling of papers and the murmur of her 
own name which embarrassed her. She wondered how she 
looked standing in the clear June sunlight with the slope 
of the lawn behind her. She wore a long gown, loosely 
belted like a nun’s habit and folded back below the hollow 
of her throat. She was thankful that it trailed about her 
feet, but she fretted because her hands emerged startlingly 
red and rawboned from the wide white sleeves. She stood 
tensely waiting for the bugle note which was the signal that 
the Gate of the Bowl was opening; drew a long quivering 
sigh of relief when she saw the Heralds appear, far off, tiny 
and distinct against the sunny wall; and when the faces 
fronting her turned toward the procession that was pouring 
forth from the wide-open gates, she began in a curious 
fashion to enjoy herself. 

She was close to the terrace, so close that she could make 
out the familiar faces scattered among its crowd. Miss 
Haynes stood behind a group of chairs at the back, the 


34 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Dean and his wife sat with guests in the square formed 
by the white pillars of the central doorway, and beyond 
them, sitting composedly alone in a basket chair, was Anne. 

As always, Barbara found herself surprised to discover 
how remarkably Anne showed up among other women. 
She had a brown, definitely-shaped face and strong white 
teeth. Her eyes were level and gray as the sea in a rain, 
her mouth humorous and firm. In the midst of a hundred 
filmy gowns, her suit of rough silk had the severity of a 
uniform but her gloves and shoes looked expensive and a 
bit of slim silken ankle showed at the edge of her skirt. 
Barbara saw a man looking at it ... a tall florid man 
with prominent eyes and a huge diamond in black enamel 
sparkling on his little finger. He had been within eye-shot 
of Anne since the time when she had introduced Doctor 
Linton to Miss Haynes. Barbara had noticed him while 
she stood listening to their thin patter. 

“ So pleased, Doctor Linton . . . come for our 
pageant ... so many coming and such a beautiful day. 
Beautiful day . . . lovely, don’t you think . . . 

and what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, you 
know . . . perfect days. And after all those raw 

mornings and the rain we had through May. So distress¬ 
ing with the pageant planned . . . and one pair of 

shoulders carrying the burden, you can know, Doctor Lin¬ 
ton . . . and then May such a trying month. Barbara, 

you find your auntie a chair on the terrace, won’t you? 
Really the nicest place . . . terrace, yes ... a 
lovely place this lovely day. Pinelands is quite a perfect 
place we think, Doctor. . . .” 

“ Yes,” Anne had said simply. “ One would like to be 
young here.” 

Now, Barbara saw her lift her head. Her own eyes 
followed Anne’s and descried a motley train mounting the 
slope to defile before the terraces and descend beyond where 
she was standing to a clear place where the sun pierced 
the leaves and fell in golden disks on the grass. 

Indians marched first, braves with painted, stolid faces, 


PINELANDS 


35 


meek squaws, dragging tent-poles. After them, led by a 
beckoning figure of Adventure, came the debonair cavaliers 
of France, the dashing uniforms contrasting with the black 
robes of a little company of monks under a high-borne 
cross. After them, in turn, the trappers and hunters of 
the wilderness, pioneers and demure Shaker girls, the 
Founder, severe and thin, like his portrait in the main- 
entrance hall, his books under one arm, soldiery that Pine- 
lands had sent to the Civil War, the immigrants of a new 
age, following Liberty and the Spirits of the Future . . . 

a rosy Justice, a pale ash-blonde Equality. 

“ These are the children of the Wilderness,” Barbara 
said, beginning her presentation. It was the Indian tableau, 
Hamish McLaurin and Dreka Masefield, lovely with her 
dark braids. Next would be the Cavaliers. She looked 
around for them. 

Ruddy Gannet moved toward her, his hand on his sword 
hilt. In its seventeenth century costume, his youthful six- 
foot figure gave an amazing impression of vitality as if 
every muscle were supple and strong as steel. His bold 
eyes slanted down at her cornerwise, the crooked lift of 
his red lips gave him a look of recklessness. He had the 
face of the Laughing Cavalier, indescribably youthful. 

Barbara watched him a trifle anxiously. One never could 
be quite sure what Ruddy Gannet would do. She sent him 
a half-smile and averted her eyes immediately lest he should 
try to make her laugh. She liked him. They had played 
tennis twice that week against Ham and Dreka. He moved 
forward and she spoke, “ Come these, adventuring from 
lands overseas . . .” and in the very midst of the 

rounded period, his blue eyes caught hers and sent her an 
unmistakable gleam. He was trying to make her laugh. 
His hair, as he swept off his hat, was the color of raw 
gold. 

She watched the incident in which he played intently. 
In the break that followed there sounded a hidden violin, 
thin delicate tones rounding into harmony with flute and 
cello. A line of girls, hand in hand, stepped into view 


36 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

against a background of living green. The sunlight and 
shadow played unevenly over their floating draperies. The 
airy slimness of their bodies added to the enchantment and 
unreality of the scene. It was a dance of exquisite slow 
movement and quaint posturings as figurative as the forms 
encircling a Wedge wood vase. 

“ When do we eat ? ” Ruddy asked at her elbow. 

“ We’re a third through/’ Barbara answered in a whisper 
as indefinite as his own. “ There’ll be tea when it’s over 
. . . always is.” 

Ruddy sighed. “ What about a picnic in the Bowl ? 
Get Ham and Dreka. My old man’s here but I can ditch 
him.” 

“ Why, Ruddy Gannet. It isn’t allowed.” But at the 
same instant she was chagrined by the flash of mirth 
across his face. He was laughing at her scruples . . . 

at her. “Anyway, / wouldn’t ditch Anne,” she finished 
virtuously. 

“Anne? Who’s Anne? Your aunt?” 

No, not her aunt . . . Miss Haynes persisted in call¬ 
ing her that . . . not even quite a cousin. She under¬ 

took to explain the relationship in a hasty whisper. 
“ Evelyn’s cousin . . . my mother’s . . . Evelyn. 

And she was my father’s best friend in ’94. Anne brought 
me up.” Then she saw that Miss Haynes’ eyes were bor¬ 
ing into her face and glancing up, observed that Ruddy 
was apparently deaf and oblivious. Her own face as¬ 
sumed a quick, blank expression. She did not speak again, 
fixing her mind on the first line of her next speech; but 
the moment the tableaux were done she found him again 
beside her shouldering a path for her through the crowd. 
All about them was the buzz and chatter of conversation. 
People pushed back their chairs and stood about in groups, 
each encircling some quaintly costumed player. Maids 
from the dormitories were carrying out trays of cups and 
saucers and the tables were set up under the trees. Ruddy 
stopped at the terrace steps to introduce his father who 
happened to be the glossy-looking man with the diamond 


PINELANDS 


37 

ring and Barbara said, “ I am very pleased to meet you, 
Mr. Gannet,” and stood hesitating, wondering if they were 
going on with her to Anne. 

Anne had moved away from the terrace and was talking 
to two men whom Barbara did not know. She beckoned 
imperiously and held out her hand. 

“ Anne, I . . . Why, you’ve been crying, Anne.” 

“ I’m a sentimental old fool,” Anne said composedly. 
“ Every time I come to a thing like this I set my teeth and 
swear I won’t, and every time I do. It’s partly the music, 
though it’s not really such wonderful music when you think 
about it . . . and partly it’s you, all of you. You’re 

so incredibly young . This is Barbara, Mark. And, Barbara, 
this is Mark Hale, an old pupil of mine. He was a little 
boy in a school I taught once out at Wynville.” 

“ When she wasn’t much more than a little girl, herself,” 
Mark Hale said. 

“ Fifteen years older than you, at least,” Anne reminded 
him imperturbably. “ I’m nearly forty-three.” 

Why did Anne always blurt her age out like that? “ I 
am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Hale.” He was cer¬ 
tainly old enough now, over twenty-five anyway, and lean 
and tall with a whimsical look on his thin-cheeked face. 
The other man was his brother, Geoffrey Hale. “ I am 
very pleased to meet you, Mr. Hale.” Tall and tanned 
with flesh that had an underlying look of hardness. His 
eyes were dark-gray and his hand closed on hers with a 
grip that hurt a little. 

‘'May I present Mr. Gannet, Doctor Linton?” (Was 
it right . . . the right way round for introduction? 

Couldn’t be helped now. . . .) “And this is Ruddy 

Gannet, Anne. Mr. Hale, Mr. Hale, Mr. Gannet, Mr. 
Gannet. Did you like the pageant? Wasn’t the dancing 
lovely ? And the Cavaliers ? ” She stood smiling in the 
sunlight, both hands in Anne’s, her glance radiant. But 
Anne’s attention diverted slightly to the elder Gannet whom 
she regarded with the slightest of frowns. “ Are you stay¬ 
ing to dinner ? ” 


38 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Anne shook her head. “ Not to-night. We’re short of 
help at St. Agatha’s.” 

“ Aren’t you always short of help at St. Agatha’s ? You 
can wait for tea, surely, Anne-dear.” 

“ The train goes at six-thirty. Miss Haynes said you 
might walk down with me.” 

“ Choral Union’s at seven. But if I’m excused, it doesn’t 
matter. I’ll bring your tea right away, shall I ? Ruddy and 
I will bring it for all of you if you’ll sit here.” 

“ I’ll help,” Geoffrey Hale offered unexpectedly. €t Let 
me help.” 

“ You’re the Geoff Hale that was Lieutenant-Colonel of 
the Battalion, three or four years back, aren’t you? ” Ruddy 
asked as the three went down the slope. He had taken off 
his Cavalier’s hat and walked with it crushed under his 
arm, his red-gold hair bright in the sunshine. He was 
younger than Hale but he overtopped him, was more dash¬ 
ing, more brilliant, with an air of reckless adventuring. 

“ Three. And you’re . . .” 

“ Ruddy’s Lieutenant-Colonel, now,” Barbara explained. 
There raced through her mind the thought that she had not 
quite realized how important Ruddy was. “ And captain 
of the football team, too. We won every game last fall.” 

“ I’ve your old room,” Ruddy said. 

“ Have you ? ” Geoffrey was polite but indifferent. 
“ Same old cakes, I see. Get a lot of chocolate, shall we?” 

It was a thrilling thing to stroll back across the lawn 
between them. Two Lieutenant-Colonels of the Battalion. 
Everyone looked at the Laughing Cavalier and many peo¬ 
ple knew Geoffrey Hale, too, and nodded at him. Barbara 
liked his smile, liked the intensity of his gray eyes. She 
enjoyed the faces turning toward them. The groups they 
passed were wondering, probably, who the girl was with 
two such companions. Her cheeks flushed deeply with 
rose and she sent bright searching glances about her. 
“ Anyway,” she thought, “ I was the Interpreter.” 

She sat on the arm of Anne’s chair sipping her tea with 
the enjoyment of a person to whom the taste of tea with 


PINELANDS 39 

lemon is pleasurably new, and when the men rose for a 
moment as Miss Haynes joined them, she bent over and 
asked in an impulsive whisper: 

“ How do I look, Anne ? I mean . . . how did I 
look out there alone? Awfully big and gawky?” 

“ You looked exactly like a candle to me,” Anne said. 

“A candle ? ” 

“ Like a slim, white candle, far off, set in a niche down 
a cathedral nave. An unlighted candle.” 

“ Anne. Of all things. A candle.” 

“ Unlighted,” Anne repeated. “ I kept thinking that all 
through everything. I must have seen a picture somewhere, 
it’s such a persistent idea. A tall, slender candle with a 
little new wick of a soul . . . not yet lighted. Only it 

won’t be very long now. Some day soon, Life will come 
past and put flame to the wick. Naturally,” she added after 
a second, “ I cried.” 

Mr. Gannet shifted in his chair and looked sharply at 
Anne with an air of seizing the opportunity. “ Did you say 
flame, Doctor?” 

It caught them fairly. Barbara hoped that Anne wasn’t 
going to explain that absurd secret whimsy. She was so 
apt to say anything she wished, flatly, not caring how it 
sounded or what people thought. She dug her elbow warn- 
ingly into Anne’s arm and saw a fleeting amusement on her 
mouth. 

“ I’m afraid what I was saying wasn’t about flames such 
as you mean, Mr. Gannet. You’re interested in fires from 
a business point of view, aren’t you? I’ve seen your bill¬ 
boards, I think. Fire-insurance and real-estate? Big ones, 
all over Chicago ? ” 

“ Big ones . . . and all over Chicago. Yes, ma’am.” 

“ I know. One of them stands cater-corner from my 
office window at St. Agatha’s. Big ... as you say.” 

He was obviously taken aback for his mouth opened. 
“You don’t like it?” 

Anne’s mouth took on its look of faint mockery. 
Barbara’s breath caught. Was she going to make fun of 


40 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

him? Was she going to ridicule Ruddy’s father, that im¬ 
pressive successful-looking man? Anne had so little rever¬ 
ence for men. What would Ruddy think if Anne jawed at 
his father . . . about bill-boards? 

Her glance swept the circle. Gannet and Mark Hale 
were watching Anne intently, waiting to hear what she was 
going to say. But Barbara discovered with something like 
astonishment that both Geoffrey Hale and Ruddy were 
looking straight at her. She smiled at them impartially and 
Geoffrey smiled back, his teeth flashing white in his brown 
face. Ruddy did not smile. Instead he sent her a slanting, 
significant look that caught and held her own. It was an 
inquiring look, obscurely provocative, with something in it 
that Barbara felt she should have understood. 

It excited and emboldened her. Her head went up. 
Airy, laughingly patronizing words began tumbling out of 
her mouth. It did not matter what she said. Anything 
would serve, she thought, if it could keep Anne from row¬ 
ing with Ruddy’s father over a bill-board that she hated. 

“Anne has these weird fancies, you must know. She’s 
always thinking funny things about fire and flame. . . . 

•When she thinks about happiness she thinks of flame. She 
told me so once when I was a little girl. An inextinguish¬ 
able fire, she called it ... a fire that people keep go¬ 
ing out of anything . . . love, if they have it, and little 

things like jokes . . . and sometimes build up high with 

the driftwood of their dreams . . „ with the driftwood. 

. . . That’s what she said.” 

She stopped in the midst of a silence. Various expres¬ 
sions confronted her on their faces. Mark Hale was 
smiling, a tilted whimsical smile. Miss Haynes looked 
astounded, observing Anne with her mouth tight as if she 
had discovered in her some secret viciousness. Barbara’s 
heart struck hard against her side. She’d made a fool of 
herself chattering about Anne. “ You’ve no business ever 
to tell things that go on at home,” Anne was accustomed 
to say. “ Everything within our own walls is a confidence. 
That’s what homes are for.” Idiot! Chattering, ill-bred 


PINELANDS 41 

fool! Making her inane breaks. Already Anne knew 
she was overwhelmed. She could see a tiny spot of color 
in Anne’s smooth cheek. Doctor Linton put down her cup 
and stood up. 

“ I must fly, really, and you, too, Barbara, if you’re to 
change your gown before you go to the station. We’ve no 
more than time to make the train.” 

“If you’re taking the Chicago train . a Gannet 
began. 

Anne gave him a swiftly-passing hand. “ Good-bye, Mr. 
Gannet. The pageant was all you prophesied, Miss Haynes, 
and Pinelands is delightful. Thank you, Cavalier of France, 
for serving me. And good-bye, Mark. Come and see me. 
I’m at home almost any Sunday tea-time. It’s a wonderful 
thing to find a little boy . . . grown up ... on a 

terrace . . . still speaking the same language.” 

“ She is exquisite,” he said in a brusque, toneless voice 
and nodded at Barbara who was shaking hands with 
Geoffrey. “ She looks like a delicate sketch, daring and 
vivid. . . .” 

“ And incomplete.” 

“You love her best of anything on earth, don’t you?” 
he said, smiling. “ Better than the breath in your own 
body.” 

“ Yes,” Anne answered, “ I love her . . . just like 

that.” 

From the top of the steps, Barbara looked back. Mark 
and Geoffrey had already turned and were strolling off 
across the lawn, but Ruddy and his father were standing 
beside the scattered chairs, saying nothing, looking after 
them. The elder Gannet regarded her reflectively, his 
fingers stroking and twirling his watch-chain. Ruddy’s 
look was bold and significant . . . as if he were trying 

deliberately to call her back to him. 


Ill 


RUDDY 

I 

By seven the terraces were empty. The eastern sky re¬ 
flected a windy sunset and rose, clear gold, above the purple 
shadows darkening between the distant hills. Choral Union 
had begun. As she ran up the drive, Barbara could hear 
the first chorus of the cantata pouring through the open 
windows; and it halted and began again as she mounted the 
steps. 

“ But I'm not so awfully late,” she said aloud. And then 
stopped utterly still as Ruddy Gannet moved from the 
shadow of the doorway. 

“ You're late enough,” he chuckled. “ I thought you'd 
never come; and all the time, of course, I was praying 
you’d be latest of anyone.” 

Barbara smiled a little. A delightful irresponsibility 
touched her as she met his slantwise look. She stood irreso¬ 
lute, swinging one foot in a half-circle, thoughts tumbling 
through her mind like a torrent, speculating as to what 
Ruddy was going to do next. For a few seconds, he did 
nothing. Then his hand, groping, found hers and his fingers 
closed about her wrist. 

“ We . . . ought to go, Ruddy. We’re late.” 

“ They'll have marked us off by now.” 

A curious breathlessness blurred his voice. He drew her 
through the dusky hall into a narrow classroom and closing 
the door noiselessly behind them, pushed her into the deep 
embrasure of a window. Neither of them spoke for a little. 
Only the faint, far-off singing touched the stillness that was 
like a quiet hand laid on one's heart. The scent of lilac 


RUDDY '43 

and flowering currant drifted through the open window 
and the room filled slowly with the gray twilight. 

“ Barbara . . .” Ruddy said and stopped. She heard 

him draw a long, uneven breath. She could not see him 
clearly but she thought that he was smiling. His arm 
slipped about her and set her pulses beating. For a mo¬ 
ment she was acutely conscious of the sounds and scents 
about them, the unseen rush of wings, the brushing of 
branches against the outer wall, the chuckle of sleepy birds, 
the invisible dusk stealing about them, presaging darkness. 
The next, she felt his hands against her cheeks and his lips 
crushing down on hers. 

Until then, she had been unresistant, hardly even quite 
expectant; but with his kiss she seemed to be swept out on 
a flood-tide of feeling. Tears came to her eyes and she 
knew that she was trembling. 

“ Are you going to tell ? ” she whispered. “ Ruddy, you 
won’t tell ? ” It was not at all what she had meant to say 
and she pushed away his hand, struggling with the sobs 
that threatened to rise and overwhelm her. “ I couldn’t 
bear it if you told . . . anybody. And if you . . . 
if you laugh . . .” 

“ Laugh ? ” He stood close beside her, his face puzzled. 
“Why, Babs, you’ve no call to cry. You knew. . . . 
We had a show-down coming, hadn’t we ? After this after¬ 
noon? Sure, we had. What’s the matter with you?” 

“ N-nobody ever kissed me before. And you . . . 

you never even said you liked me.” 

He stooped and kissed her hot half-hidden cheek. “ But 
you knew that. Don’t you know it ? ” 

“Tell me you do. I want you to tell me.” She got to 
her feet and faced him, one hand caught tight against her 
throat. “ It’s that I want you to say it, Ruddy.” 

He said it slowly, his eyes holding hers, “ I love you, 
Babs. I’ve always loved you.” 

“ No,” she murmured. “ No, that isn’t true. Not always. 
Tell me really, when you began.” 

“ Just now, really.” He threw back his head and laughed 


44 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


excitedly. “ Just now, when I kissed you. Barbara, you’re 
sweet. You’re . . . sweet. I’m crazy about you.” 

“ But only just now. Within five minutes.” 

“Well?” he gave back belligerently. “You never 
thought a lot about me, did you? Till now?” 

It was quite true. He seemed in a moment altogether 
a different person. She had a sense of tumultuous change, 
of a new thing come into being with the touch of his lips. 
His straight, smiling gaze confused her. 

“I’m not sure even now. I . . . something is 
happening and I don’t know what it is. I’m going 
. . . away ... by myself. Let me by, Ruddy, 
please. . . .” 

He moved aside but as she passed him, he caught her 
hand and held it, palm upward against his lips. His whisper 
barely reached her through the fragrant dusk, “Whatever 
you say goes, Babs. Always. Only ... do you want 
to go away ? ” 

She did not. His nearness was too sweet. She stood 
motionless, her lips apart, her eyes flaming darkly. It 
seemed suddenly as if they were standing, close together, 
on a high mountain, far above the peopled earth, above its 
sounds and hurry, in the midst of silence. 

Ruddy stammered suddenly, “ B-Barbara, I do love you. 
I didn’t know . . . but I do. Maybe it’s only begun 

the last five minutes but it’ll last . . . always, all my 
life. I’ll love you . . . love you . . . only you. 

Only you, forever. I want you . . . f-for my sweet¬ 
heart and my wife. Babs, will you kiss me now ? ” 

She nodded dumbly. The warmth crept back to her lips 
and she even smiled a little. This was love. Love. And 
it was very beautiful. She felt his hard cheek pressing 
against her own and she turned her face ever so little until 
her mouth met his. 

II 

For hours she lay awake. She had pushed her bed close 
to the window which was wide open to the June night with 


RUDDY 


45 


its blue haze and its moon dropping down into a feathery 
tree-top. Barbara lay still, her body exquisitely at rest, the 
freshening touch of the night wind on her face. But her 
imagination was heightened as if by a drug. She had still 
the sensation of being in a high, quiet place, far, far above 
the earth, of being, in some curious way, herself a part of 
the eerie night with its silver-blue darkness and spread of 
stars. 

Yet, beneath that sense of unreality, her brain was extra¬ 
ordinarily active. She could picture all that had passed as 
distinctly as if it were happening again. She could see 
Ruddy’s tall, broad-shouldered figure and his face in the 
darkness, the faint reckless lift of his red mouth, the look 
that had caught her eyes first on the terrace . . . and 

that other look that had followed her and that was like a 
call. She could feel the touch of his fingers locking with 
hers; and over and over, like the refrain of a song she 
heard his shaken whisper, “ I want you . . . for my 

sweetheart * , . and my wife. Babs, will you kiss me 
now ? ” 

Did he think she was pretty? Was she pretty enough? 
Once she got up out of bed and stood thoughtfully before 
her mirror, a slim shadow, her feet bathed in a pool of 
moonlight. In the glass her eyes looked black and her hair 
was like a dusky cloud about her shoulders. She did not 
dare turn on the light to look closer and she got back into 
bed, feeling more unreal than ever. 

Already she knew that a great gulf had been fixed be¬ 
tween the evening and the afternoon. There had been only 
Ruddy’s kiss—his arm about her—his lips on hers . . . 

and with it a joy so strange that it was almost pain. 
“ Like the Sleeping Beauty,” she whispered to herself in 
the dark. “ Awakened with a kiss.” Immediately, through 
her thoughts there ran the figures of old fairy tales, the 
Princess sleeping in her tower, the Prince crashing through 
the thorny hedges half-bewildered, obedient only to an 
inner urge. It was as if Ruddy had been standing close 
beside her for a long time, waiting for the moment to come 


46 THE FLAME OE HAPPINESS 

when he could kiss her and she had been asleep, fatefully 
asleep until the moment came. 

She was surprised that she had never considered love 
deeply. There had been Luther. . . . She closed her 

lips on the little ejaculation . . . “ No, no,” that was 

wrung from her always by the pain of remembering Luther, 
and lay a moment not even thinking at all. Then she came 
back to Love. It had never touched her as a reality. She 
had read poems of love, had looked at pictures of great 
lovers, had been enchanted by a bright vision of an im¬ 
aginary lover, rather like Sir Launcelot; but she had not 
guessed what love was like. The outside world had been 
simply a distant hum that hardly reached her in the en¬ 
closure of her absorptions. She had been so busy . . . 

and beyond the swift routine of her days, her impressions 
were vague. They must have been vague, she thought, 
when Ruddy had been there day after day and she had 
never known him for the lover Life was bringing her. 

Or hadn’t she? She had known him for two years. 
Now, looking back, she could persuade herself that she had 
liked him better than any of the other boys. Their heads, 
uncovered for chapel prayer, seemed but an intertoned drab 
background for his red-gold coloring; their glances were 
steadily blank or abortive and shy like her own. And 
Ruddy’s were challenging. One remembered, after the first 
of them, that his eyes were bold and brilliantly blue. She 
could call to mind innumerable occasions of which Ruddy 
had been the center. Parade on the drill ground with the 
Battalion marching past the Commandant, Ruddy with eyes 
front swinging a forearm stiffly, his thumb horizontal. 
Ruddy, plunging through the mud of a soggy football field. 
Ruddy, flashing past the line of girls on a black horse. 
Ruddy, singing a lusty baritone, at Choral Union. He had 
fixed himself indelibly upon her mind and memory, before 
she knew; and it comforted her to believe that all these 
months, mysterious forces had been drawing them together. 
Only such a faith made his kisses inevitable. 

She believed that they were inevitable. She had the 


RUDDY 


47 

amazing woman-power to stop comprehension at any given 
point and draw a veil across understanding, shutting out 
facts too obvious to deny. A woman can face reality to a 
certain point and beyond that, if she chooses, be as oblivious 
as if it did not exist. Barbara had her own insight and 
instinctive wisdom. She knew that too close observing 
might reveal imperfection in a lovely thing. “ I want you/’ 
Ruddy had said, “ for my sweetheart . . . and my 
wife.” She did not need to go beyond that. Everything 
that had happened hitherto was dulled by the glory that 
had fallen about her with that phrase. St. Agatha’s 
. . . Pinelands . . . the very pageant of that after¬ 

noon had become of the past, chaotic and negligible. Every 
moment of her life up to the moment when Ruddy kissed 
her was of that infinite past. This was the present. 

When, at last, she fell asleep, her joyous thought went 
on. She dreamed that she came through a gate and saw 
Ruddy ahead, walking at the edge of a white road. She 
ran a little and caught up with him, slipping her hand into 
his with a proud, gay lift of her chin . . . because she 

had the right. The broad fields on either hand were full of 
color and perfume and the thick grass lay like a carpet 
under their feet. They went on to the top of a high, quiet 
hill . . * and suddenly all about them fires were blaz¬ 

ing. Ruddy looked down at her with his merry, slanting 
glance and stooped and kissed her. The illusion was so 
vivid that she sprang instantly awake and lay in the gray 
dawn with closed eyes and throbbing pulses, experiencing 
again the ecstasy that she had known when he held her in 
his hard young arms. 

The moment red broke in the east and the day bright¬ 
ened, she rose and began to dress. As she slipped her 
chemise over her head a new idea came to her and she 
waltzed the length of the room, stopped to execute a pirou¬ 
ette before the mirror and put a finger on the calendar 
hanging beside it. With a blunt scarlet pencil she drew a 
heavy line about the second day of June. It was to be 
, . . always . , s her Day. Her Day of days. 


48 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Here, life had begun. From this high point, Love beckoned 
Barbara Fallows into untrodden ways, into exquisite ad¬ 
ventures. 


Ill 

She expected to find a change, subtle and abrupt, in 
Ruddy. She watched with an acute expectancy as he 
marched into chapel at the head of the Battalion, passing 
so close to her that she could have touched his hand. He 
had often sent her a sweeping, cornerwise glance from his 
post at the end of the row, but on the Day of days, he 
seemed ostentatiously to ignore her. During the hymn he 
stood erect, eyes lifted abstractedly and a singularly wooden 
expression on his face. At once her joy blurred. A long¬ 
ing for assurance tormented her. Perhaps he had been 
fooling . . . perhaps he’d despise a girl who gave her 

lips to him too joyously. . . . 

But an hour later, when she was practicing in one of the 
music rooms, Nelle Palmer slipped through a narrow open¬ 
ing of the door and thrust upon her a sharply folded bit of 
paper with four words scribbled across a trigonometry 
problem, “ Nine . . . South Gate . . . Bowl.’’ 

So he had been thinking of her all the time. Barbara 
felt the hot blood pouring into her face and looked up to 
meet Nelle’s smile. But it was a reluctant smile, all its 
kindliness withheld. Nelle had been one of the children at 
St. John’s. She was a demure girl with wide eyes and pale 
hair, given to the frilliest of frocks. 

“ It’s the first time you’ve been dated,” she said, half- 
inquiringly as if she could not, even then, believe her senses. 
There was a rule against talking during practice hours and 
Nelle spoke in a peculiarly inaudible tone. “ Look here, 
Babs, you can’t muff this. They sent me to tell you. 
Listen. There’ll be a key for you. And you pay Olga fifty 
cents.” 

“ Olga?” 

“ Oh, my goodness. Didn’t Ruddy tell you ? You’ll have 


RUDDY 


4 9 


a key to the area door like the maids. Ruddy ought to 
have told you. You’ll have to do as Gert Lanman did.” 

She was conscious of a sickening pang. “ Gert Lanman ? 
Did she . . . did Ruddy ... ?” 

“ He was just crazy about her,” Nelle said inexorably. 
“ Last spring. They even wrote. I didn’t think he’d date 
up again. The Crowd kept Thursdays and Sundays for 
them.” 

“Are there ... I mean, I never knew . . . 
about other people.” 

“ Nobody does know outside the Crowd. Nothing’s ever 
said. If you’re caught you stand the gaff alone. You’ve 
got to understand that, Babs. It’s each of us on our 
own.” 

At the end of the hour she went to the dormitory. A 
Swedish housemaid, a woman about thirty, industriously 
polishing the floor outside her door, spoke to her mum- 
blingly and Barbara nodded, only half-comprehending; but 
as she closed the door of her room, she saw, unmistakably 
significant on her white pillow, a long, iron key. Instantly 
she understood. The servants’ rooms occupied one end of 
the three floors of the dormitory furthest from the suite of 
the floor-teacher and separated from the main corridor by 
large double doors. Maids were hard to get, the house¬ 
keeper complained, and independent to boot. One couldn’t 
be expected to look after them like children. One could 
only furnish them keys and trust them not to be noisy 
when they came in late from a dance. . . . 

Barbara did not open a book all day. There were no 
lessons for her to learn from printed pages. She sat at a 
piano, forgetting the slow creep of the hours while the 
music that she made surged through her. It held all the 
things she knew or guessed, all the beauty, all the strange 
tumultuous joy of living. 


IV 

By nine o’clock, when Barbara slipped through the doors 
and started down the stairs to the area, it was dark. She 


50 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

found Dreka Masefield on the next landing, which was 
faintly lighted with a blue spark of gas. Dreka clutched 
her hand tightly and they crept down the final flight to¬ 
gether. 

“ The boys told me to watch for you,” she whispered, as 
inaudibly as Nelle Palmer. “ Did Olga bring you a key? ” 

“ Yes. Were you wanting to use it? ” 

“ Silly. I’ve my own. You pay Olga, you know. Fifty 
cents.” 

“ Yes.” 

The shades were drawn at the windows of the dormi¬ 
tories, according to rule, and there were no lights in the 
Quad. They skirted the drill-ground, keeping close to the 
trees where the shadows were darker. At the sight of 
Ruddy, waiting for her by the south gate, Barbara’s dread 
gave way to a delicious joy very deep down in her heart 
and so intimate that she was thankful no one knew of it 
but herself. Beyond him were other figures, slim in the 
starry dusk ... a boy or two, a girl. She made out 
Nelle Palmer in the circle of Ned Dalrymple’s arm, her 
cheek brushing his shoulder. 

“And no ol’ frozen-faced berry of a chaperone,” Ruddy 
observed. “ Not with this Crowd. No chaperone wanted 
with this mooney, spooney Crowd. S’long, gepmun.” 
They moved away from the others, sauntering along the 
strip of turf inside the wall of the Bowl, the great ribs of 
the bleachers rising like the bones of a mammoth skeleton 
above their heads. Looking back she saw Hamish Mc- 
Laurin kiss Dreka. 

It was silly, of course. Or was it? It seemed rather 
sweet. Nelle had looked remarkably pretty with her face 
pressed against Ned’s rough sleeve. A throb of friend¬ 
liness, deeper than she had ever known, went through her 
now that she shared this secret with those other girls. 
Then, suddenly, she remembered Gert Lanman; and when 
Ruddy would have put his arm about her, she moved 
aside. 

“ Tell me something,” she demanded, flatly. “ Did you 


RUDDY 51 

ever go with Gert Lanman? Like . . . like this, I mean. 
And write to her ? ” 

“ What if I did ? ” he returned in a cool voice. “ What's 
the matter with Gert ? ” 

Malice kept her silent. A small smile twisting her mouth 
implied that a great deal was the matter with Gert. Her 
joy ebbed away and she felt a bitter envy of the frail little 
person who had walked under these bleachers with Ruddy 
the spring before. She felt his hands on her shoulders like 
a caress, turning her slowly toward him. But she stood 
apathetically and looked at him with narrowed eyes and a 
gleam of teeth pressing her lip. 

“What’s it to you?” Ruddy asked her softly. “You 
should worry. Last year, maybe, I saw her once or twice. 
I haven’t laid eyes on her for almost a year and I could’ve. 
She lives in Chicago.” 

“ You wrote to her.” 

“ I don’t believe I ever did answer her last letter. Gert 
was too little, and I like ’em tall. I like ’em tall, Spitfire. 
Get that? Look here . . . no, look at me, drat you. 

Do you think Gert or any other girl means a tinker’s dam 
to me, now that I’ve got you for my girl? That was be¬ 
fore . . his arms slipped about her, drawing her close. 

“ Barbara. . . . Kiss me.” 

V 

Almost at once Barbara found herself one of a nebulous 
group, as if she had taken vows, hidden and wordless, in 
some secret order. She was aware of innumerable occur¬ 
rences to which, hitherto, she had been blind . . . care¬ 
less, significant glances . . . unsigned notes finding 
their destination without apparent direction . . . the in¬ 

evitable absence of one or two on Choral Union night or 
Sunday Evensong. Girls whom she hardly knew came to 
her room, ostensibly to study, and remained for long visits, 
curled on her bed, offering her incomprehensible confidences 
of which much of the meaning lay not in their words but 
in their expressive pauses. She met them at night, gliding 


52 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

up and down the stairs, passing her with a murmur in the 
dark. 

In her heart she felt for them an odd disdain. She was 
as contemptuous of their slight demands on life as she was 
scornful of their rather too eager confidences. It seemed 
incredible that Nelle Palmer, fastidiously dainty herself, 
could really care for Ned Dalrymple with his pudgy hands 
and round pimpled face; or that Dreka took any pride in a 
mere private of the Battalion like Hamish. 

An intense pride mingled with her own sharp sense of 
loving. She could hardly have told where one ended and 
the other began. She had the feeling that she and Ruddy 
were not like these others who broke rules and slipped out 
to meet each other in the dark. Only the outer semblance 
was the same. Actually, they were of the race of great 
lovers . . . Paul and Virginia, Romeo and Juliet; and 

their love was not a little thing, not even a sudden thing, 
but destined, ordained, coming to its fruition in due season. 

There was nothing at all complex in her feeling for 
Ruddy. It consisted of little more than a great joy center¬ 
ing in him. She was a captured citadel, a stronghold sur¬ 
rendered because she herself had rapturously flung the doors 
wide. She loved him with all the pent-up passion of her 
youth. His kisses were things of sweet, keen ecstasy, 
sealed from all her subsequent emotions by a white scar on 
her memory. 

“ Tell me again that you love me, Babs.” 

“Don’t you know it? Love you ... all my heart 
and soul. . . .” 

“Will you always ? 99 

“ For a million years. Will you ? ” 

“ Always, Babs.” 

All her life she was to be-glad of that June with its 
tumultuous joy. She was one with the wild northern spring 
drifting into summer, sandaled with its wind and flame. 
The days went by simply, magnificently, blurring into star¬ 
lit nights when Ruddy waited for her in the shadow of the 
high wall. Reality existed for her only in him . , . in 


RUDDY 


53 


his merry eyes, in the touch of his fingers locking with 
hers, in that sweet caress when he lifted her hand and held 
its palm against his lips. The hours she spent with him 
had a heaped-up rapture. 

VI 

On Recital Night, the week before Commencement, 
Barbara and Dreka slipped away in the midst of the music 
and waited for the boys by the south gate of the Bowl; 
and they lingered late, partly because there was a constant 
movement along the gravel walk skirting the wall and partly 
because the night was glorious and the moon like a jewel 
set in a square of blue-black sky. The quarter hours struck 
from the clock in the tower, rolling above them with a 
harsh vibration. 

“ It's past eleven/’ Dreka whispered when they met by 
the gate. “ Nelle’s coming just behind us. We’ll have to 
chance it now, Babs. The Assembly has been dark this 
long while.” 

But as she slipped around the brick post, footsteps 
crunched on the gravel and two men, walking soundlessly 
on the spongy sod, rounded the corner of the wall. Hamish 
dragged at Dreka’s arm but her light gown glimmered 
treacherously in the shadows and a glowing spot fell upon 
her, moving up and up. 

“ Flash-light. You beat it,” Ruddy whispered. Barbara 
saw his eyes, intense and wretched and felt his hand push¬ 
ing her back. Slipping through the darkness under the 
bleachers, she had a sensation of utter fear, the first she 
had ever known. Her feet stumbled and all her thoughts 
were wiped out in terror. 

“ My word . . . Miss Masefield,” a voice barked be¬ 
hind her. “Who is with you? McLaurin . . . Gan- 

net.” The sound dropped abruptly. Apparently they had 
turned without another word and gone away toward the 
distant Quad. 

Barbara waited a long time until everything was quiet, 
before she circled back around the Bowl. Nelle and Ned 


54 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


had disappeared. She was alone, moving without sensa¬ 
tion, the fear of the first moment swallowed up in a numb 
sense of fatality. Words of an old poem drifted vaguely 
into her thoughts . . . “In the dim, deserted Hall, the 

Piper waits his due. . . .” She expected at every mo¬ 

ment to meet someone, to have a flash-light turned into 
her eyes as it had been turned on Dreka. Yet she reached 
the dormitory and her own room safely. 

She was aware of a faint stir through the building. 
Doors were opening cautiously, voices sounded in the lower 
hall. Restlessness drove her out into the corridor and she 
went down to the end where a filter stood, to get a drink. 
As she rounded the corner she came on two teachers whis¬ 
pering. 

“ Barbara. Where have you been ? It’s past mid¬ 
night.” 

“ I went to the filter for a drink, Miss Gray.” She said 
it a shade too innocently and her breath caught. Miss Gray 
sent her a sharp glance. 

“ You’ve no business out of your room as late as this. 
You might report to Miss Haynes. I happen to know she 
is still up.” 

Barbara turned obediently down the stairs. Her heart 
was thudding, but she told herself that if she could keep 
her head, if Dreka had not already given her away she was 
quite safe. The light was on in her room and her sash 
was flung across the bed with an open book. There was 
no use in lying. Lying must include not only a mental 
effort plus a complicated memory, but a tale that tallied 
with others. But she could answer in monosyllables, and, 
if worst came to worst, take refuge in an impregnable 
silence. At Miss Haynes’ door, she heard sharp voices. 
Then, almost immediately, Dreka came out with a curious 
hard little smile on her mouth and Barbara passed her 
going in. 

Miss Haynes was wrapped in a flowered kimono of thin 
silk, her front hair twisted in grayish wisps of papers. A 
green-shaded lamp stood on her table and .in its light her 


RUDDY 55 

face looked more sallow than ever. Her thin knees showed 
sharply under her tight-drawn negligee. 

“ Why, Barbara/’ she said in a high, excited voice, “ Mr. 
Beverly didn’t bring you in, too, did he ? ” 

“ No, Miss Haynes.” 

“ Well, then. . . . But here you are.” 

There she was indubitably, her slim figure straight, braced 
against the door. “ Miss Gray told me to report. I was in 
the hall after hours. I’d been down to the filter for a 
drink.” 

“ Miss Gray must have been even more confused than 
usual,” Miss Haynes observed acidly. Barbara was per¬ 
fectly aware that there was no liking between the two. 
“ Although everything is confusing enough, I must say. 
All the responsibility laid on one pair of shoulders . . . 

and you shouldn’t have been out of your room, of course 
. . . but you were thirsty, I suppose. It’s just that I 

want to point out to you, Barbara, that nothing can go on 
here among you girls . . . you can see how it was the 

moment you left your room after hours . . . that it 

isn’t brought to my knowledge. Sooner or later it comes 
back to me. I am not a person to boast, but whatever any¬ 
one says, I know what happens . . . one of the penal¬ 

ties of carrying the responsibility of a hundred girls. I do 
wish I could press home that fact on you, on all of you. 
If you would remember, always, every one of you that 
Miss Haynes will know what happens in this dormitory, 
that it is her duty to know and that you cannot hope to 
conceal anything . . . and if before ... if you’d 
come straight to me before anything happens and say 
. . . if you’d come here into this room and just say, 

‘ Miss Haynes, I am about to do wrong, I am tempted ’ 
. . . or something about like that, and we could sit 

down quietly and talk it out together . . .” 

The wistfulness in her voice touched Barbara. She 
glanced around the room with its dun walls and sepia prints 
of the Raphael Madonna and the Angelus, her eyes travel¬ 
ing along the narrow shelves filled with text-books and 


56 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


standard classics, across the couch covered with brown 
monk’s cloth, the muslin-curtained windows, the prim mis¬ 
sion-oak desk with its knick-knacks ... an ivory pa¬ 
per knife, a tooled Florentine letter-case, a small bronze 
head of Dante. She could not imagine anything further 
from reality than to retire with Miss Haynes into that 
chaste inadequate place when she might be out under the 
June stars with Ruddy. . . . There was no need of 
saying that, she reflected. 

There was no need of saying anything. She braced her¬ 
self to answer the preceptress’ questions truthfully . . . 

but Miss Haynes asked no questions. She was not prepared 
to discuss the breach of discipline of which Barbara had 
been guilty. Indeed, she was tremulous with excitement. 
What she said flowed from her lips out of a great, sub¬ 
merged fear. After a short silence as absorbed as her 
rapid speech, she roused herself to dismiss Barbara, giving 
her a pecking kiss on the cheek. Outside the door which 
she closed softly behind her, she realized the incredible 
fact that she had finished the interview with Miss Haynes 
and had not blurted out the truth. 

VII 

She slept brokenly and the long hours of the morning 
wore down her self-possession. Dreka was locked in her 
room and could not be seen. It seemed impossible that 
Dreka would not tell. Over and over, Barbara planned 
what she would say when the time came when someone of 
the sextette let out that she and Nelle had been involved 
in Dreka’s escapade. She had the feeling that the truth, 
however long it might be delayed, would out at last. 

Only she would not give anyone else away. . . . 

“Who was with you, Barbara?” the Dean would ask, 
Miss Haynes sitting erect beside him with her mouth pursed. 

“ I can answer only for myself, sir.” Not defiantly, at 
all. Politely. 

“ You ... to have left the Hall at night. Are you 
not ashamed ? ” 


RUDDY 


57 


“ Ashamed ? ” Always at this point a clear unsullied 
happiness thrilled through her. “ Why should I be 
ashamed ? ” 

She was not ashamed. No taint of regret pierced the 
pagan gladness of those hours with Ruddy. The worst that 
she felt was a somewhat vague fear that Ruddy, being ques¬ 
tioned, would inadvertently expose their secret happiness. 
She felt she could not bear having people know her joy. 
But her thoughts evaded discipline, circling in a feverish 
course about the fact that he had been taken with Dreka, 
and the intensity of her anxiety corroded the smooth sur¬ 
face of her joy like acid, eating down to inner doubts. 
What was happening to him? Was he angry? Would he 
blame her because he had been caught or despise her be¬ 
cause she had not immediately taken her place beside him? 
It wasn’t fair that he should pay alone for happiness that 
they had shared. Still, if she went now and betrayed her¬ 
self, wouldn’t he be furious? She would become, after all 
this, someone he wanted to forget like poor Gert Lanman. 
Or would she ? Mightn’t he hold her the closer because he 
fought for her? She battled steadily against an uncon¬ 
trollable sense of misery. After lunch, Nelle Palmer 
slipped slily into her room and took up a strategic post on 
the threshold of the closet. 

“ Nobody knows anything,’* she said in her inaudible 
fashion. “ Not a thing. Babs, if they get you, you won’t 
peach. Will you? My . . . my mother’d die if a 

thing like this came out on me. I’m graduating next week. 
Babs . . .” 

“ You needn’t be afraid,” she turned her face away, press¬ 
ing it against the window. “ Nobody saw you. Did anyone 
see you ? ” 

“ No. Ruddy stalled and gave us time. I came in while 
the rumpus was on in the front hall. Dreka . . .” 

“ She didn’t give us away. At least she hadn’t, last night, 
to Miss Haynes.” 

“ She isn’t the kind who would; and the boys won’t. 
They say Bev grilled them for an hour last . • 


58 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ Why do you think I would then ? ” Barbara asked 
hotly. “ Any more than Dreka or the boys ? ” 

Nelle’s pale eyes looked out through her lashes with a 
hard contempt. “ You’ve not been in the Crowd right 
along. You don’t realize, maybe. Nobody ever tells. 
You’d be disgraced all your life if you gave one of the 
Crowd away. They’d never forget. Ruddy’s been through 
the mill, once . . . only you wouldn’t know about 

that. . . She went into a silence from which she 

presently emerged to say, “ There’s faculty meeting at 
four. I just took a note to Miss Gray. Enri Lane is sore 
as a boiled owl. She had a date to-night.” 

“ It’s probably the safest night of the year.” 

“ Enri won’t chance it, though. Not with the beans 
spilled like this.” 

Barbara sat a long time by the window after Nelle had 
gone. Her head ached and dread swept over her in sick¬ 
ening waves. It seemed strange that Hamish and Dreka 
and Ruddy should have been taken while the others went 
unsuspected. It would have been sheer relief to have told 
everything, to have gone directly to the Dean and made a 
clean breast of the whole affair. But the Crowd held her 
to silence. It was her Crowd ... a new thing. 
Through all her solitary days she had never experienced 
the camaraderie of her own kind, such as the Crowd had 
given her. That queer, blind loyalty was all they had to 
hold them. She felt that they were hers, kin of her spirit, 
never to be betrayed; and through her anxiety was drawn 
the thread of gladness that they and she were in the world 
together. 

By four o’clock, she was too restless to sit still. She 
managed an errand in the Administration building, aware, 
as she walked through the Quad, of a restrained excitement 
like her own. There was a stir as if a stone had been 
dropped into a quiet pool, setting circles into motion. 
Groups stood about on the sun-dappled walks. There was 
a constant movement up and down the steps of the build¬ 
ing. A circle of boys stood just inside the door, Barbara, 


RUDDY 


59 


hurrying past the door of the Dean’s office, caught a glimpse 
of Ruddy sitting at a long table, the light from the western 
window glinting on his hair. The mere sight of him 
steadied her. She spent the hour before dinner writing a 
letter to Anne, a rather perky letter with amusement be¬ 
tween its lines. 

“ Dreka is in quarantine. But what is quarantine? 
Rather fun. Yours is a marked window and you thrum 
your ukulele at the passers-by. All sorts of weird rumors 
are in the air about what they are going to do to the three 
of them . . . but I don’t believe rumors. They seem 

so shocked because Dreka was walking with two boys in¬ 
stead of one. ... A tempest in a teapot. Nothing 
will happen. Nobody has told, because everyone belongs 
to a Crowd and the Crowd sticks. They can’t have Dress 
Parade Alumni Day anyway without Ruddy. Anne-dear, 
I think sometimes I’m the very happiest person in the 
world.” 

She mailed the letter on her way to chapel next morning. 
She was unusually early. The organist was in his curtained 
cubicle, his face queerly foreshortened in the mirror above 
the keyboard, and a monitor was wandering up and down 
the aisles seeing that the hymnals were in place. Miss 
Haynes came in, nodding at Barbara as she seated herself 
under a great rose window above the platform; and after a 
moment or two the room began to fill. To Barbara it had, 
all of it, the aspect of unreality. The chapel seemed 
metamorphosed into something strange, the light falling dif¬ 
ferently through the window, the shadows out of place. 
The tramp of the Battalion marching up the stairs was de¬ 
lusive, almost dramatic. She waited for a glimpse of 
Ruddy, but he was not there, and with his absence the 
service became unmeaning, phantasmic. The drone of the 
organ and the chanting were interminable to the passionate 
anxiety she felt stirring beneath her assurance. 

After the final hymn, there was an interval of silence. 
No order was given for withdrawal and the rows sat wait¬ 
ing, expectantly; but the quiet lengthened and grew dull. 


60 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Once a whisper ran along the girls and Miss Haynes tapped 
with her pencil sharply on the wooden arm of her chair. 
Nothing else happened. The expectancy deepened. Three 
minutes dragged by . . . five . . . and far off, on 

the brick walk of the Quad, there was the sound of foot¬ 
steps ... a blurred sound. Was it one man . . . 

or three? Dread knotted in a lump in Barbara’s throat. 
Was it Ruddy ? On the stairs the shuffle of those steps was 
unmistakable. 

At the sound of the double doors opening, she turned 
involuntarily, looking past the uniformed rows of boys, 
filling the other side of the chapel; and saw him on the 
threshold between his guards. Blood surged into her face 
in great irregular waves. Her heart pounded and her hand 
stole up against her throat. When he marched up the 
aisle she lowered her head so that she need not see what 
was to happen. But Enri’s fingers closed warningly about 
her wrist. 

“ Hold your head up, Babs,” she murmured. “ Heaven’s 
sake.” 

Well . . . Ruddy’s head was up. He was standing 

before the platform and the Dean had risen and was read¬ 
ing an involved statement which began with Whereas and 
drifted through dreadful formal phrases. She understood 
the import without listening to the words. She had known 
from the moment she saw Ruddy standing in the opened 
door; and, in spite of her pain, she recognized the dramatic 
value of this ceremonial borrowed from the military, this 
degradation of an officer of the corps. It was like Pine- 
lands to make this gesture, to surround even punishment 
with ceremonial and formality. She found herself wonder¬ 
ing vaguely why it had not happened on the drill-ground 
or in the armory before the Battalion. And the thought 
went across her mind, as if a door had opened and closed, 
that they had set the scene in Ghapel because they wanted 
to punish as well the Unknown . . . the girl whom 

Ruddy was shielding. 

The Dean stopped on a resounding period. Ruddy swung 


RUDDY 


61 


on his heel to face the school. His teeth were locked, his 
face was still and so white that a few freckles showed with 
startling distinctness on the bridge of his nose. An officer 
came up beside him and Barbara heard a sharp tearing 
sound and afterward, through the dull quiet, the click of 
buttons falling one upon another into the man’s palm. 
They took his visored cap away from him. . . . 

She had a momentary vision of him, disheveled and awry, 
unlike himself, his hair rumpled, his shirt showing between 
the edges of his buttonless coat. As he fell into step be¬ 
tween his guards, he looked at her. It was a glance, cold 
in the beginning but, as if he understood the horror in her 
face, the corner of his mouth lifted in a fleeting mockery 
of a smile. 

She crept back across the Quad, oblivious to everything 
about her. When she was safe, behind the closed door of 
her room she went to the bed and lay down. She could 
not cry. Her throat ached uncontrollably but she had no 
sense of tears. She had gone unscathed. She had left 
Ruddy to take the consequences alone. Nobody knew 
. . . nobody would ever know . . . except Ruddy. 

Ruddy would know, always. For hours she endured dumbly 
a pain that could have no display of emotion, no phrases. 
She felt herself thrust into silence beyond all the ordinary 
formulae of expression. All she wanted was to get home 
... to St. Agatha’s ... to Anne. 


IV 


THE SOUTH DORMER 

I 

A delicate spectacle of fading light lay on the wide 
room. Barbara had the impression of space and order and 
soft color that was always to be found in Anne Linton’s 
background, but her attention fastened first on the small 
things . . . the familiar books, the Japanese print, the 

blue Wedgewood bowl filled with yellow roses. Then she 
took a swaying step or two into the room and knelt down 
by the south dormer where she could see the sky, still light 
above the trees. She could cry now. The tears fell, warm 
and refreshing on her cheeks. Fifteen minutes later, Anne 
found her there, her hat on the floor beside her, her body 
racked with sobs. When Anne said . . . “ Why, 
Barbara darling . . .” she sat back on her heels, the 

back of one hand pressed hard against her quivering mouth. 

“ I ... I don’t know why I’m crying,” she brought 
out finally in a stifled voice. “ It’s getting . . . home, 

I suppose.” 

“ Is it getting home ? ” There was a vibrant gladness 
in Anne’s voice. Her kiss was joyous. “No use crying 
now you’re here.” 

“ No.” Barbara crawled up on the dormer seat and sat 
hunched together, her arms folded about her knees. She 
felt that her relations with Anne had changed. Anne didn’t 
know about Ruddy or about the things that had happened. 
The constraint of silence was upon her here as it had been 
at Pinelands. After a minute she said tonelessly, “ I passed 
all my finals. I shall be a Senior next year.” 

“ Yes,” Anne said. “ What is all this about young Gan- 
net?” 


63 


THE SOUTH DORMER 

Barbara stiffened. Her heart fluttered at the sound of 
his name on Anne’s lips and she answered in a small, un¬ 
steady voice: “ Wh . . . what do you mean ? ” 

“ You’ve mentioned him in every letter since the day of 
the pageant.” Anne was smiling as if it amused her, but 
Barbara happened to glance at her hands; and her hands 
were curled rather tensely about the ends of her chair- 
arm. “ He graduates this year, doesn’t he ? Has he been 
making love to you ? ” 

A little spasm passed over Barbara’s face. 

“ Why don’t you like him, Anne ? ” 

“ Like him ? I’m not aware that I diffike him.” 

“ You don’t even know him.” 

“ I know his sort,” Anne said flatly. “ He’s not the sort 
I want making love to you, Baba ... at seventeen. 
How old is he?” 

“ Twenty-one. Almost twenty-two.” 

“ His father insisted on conversation coming down on the 
train the other night. He had the chair next me in the 
parlor-car ... a naive person, rather blasphemous. 
One thing he said about that young sprout of his was that 
he’d been a damned fool about girls since he was in knee- 
pants. He said it several times. Twice at least, he made it 
a God-damned fool. About girls.” 

Barbara tilted her chin and looked out of the window 
into the cool twilight depths of the tree whose branches 
brushed the ledge. A bird’s nest was stuck precariously in 
a crotch. . . . Girls. There had been Gert Lanman, 

she knew. And girls before Gert, perhaps, in a long, shad¬ 
owy processional. She remembered the ease, the passion 
of his love-making; and there, in Anne’s incorruptible pres¬ 
ence, they counted against him. Still, it was all over and 
done with. They had found each other. This, all of it, 
was before. 

" Listen, Anne. I don’t care what his father said. 
Ruddy . . . Ruddy cares about me. At least, I think 
. . . Oh, I know he does. He does care. He’s told me 
so. And I care about him . . . terribly.” 


64 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

In the dusk Anne’s shadowlike hands moved apart in 
what Barbara discerned as a gesture of distaste. “ Oh, 
Barbara.” 

“You think I’m too young to know, don’t you? But I 
do know. There’ll never be anyone else . . . for me. 

If ... if anything happened . . . If Ruddy 

threw me down, I’d want to die. That’s the way I feel, 
Anne. If you cared about me, you’d like him.” 

Anne gazed at her with ironic tenderness. Here was a 
new Barbara, a creature of self, of consciousness of flashes 
of feeling. She rose and came forward with an odd sug¬ 
gestion of wistfulness in her advance, but before she quite 
reached the south dormer, she stopped, leaning her arms 
on the back of a high chair, smiling a little. 

“ You’d like him, if you cared anything about my happi¬ 
ness,” Barbara said. 

“ Your . . . happiness,” Anne echoed. “ Honey, I 

care more about your happiness than anything in the world. 
I’d make life all happiness for you if I could, every minute 
of it.” 

“ But only Ruddy can do that for me.” She had not 
thought that it would sound so cruel. Anne’s pale smile 
irritated her. 

“ Only you can do it. You’ll make your own happiness 
. . . or your pain; and I’ll have to stand by.” 

“You aren’t .trying to understand, Anne. You told me 
yourself to think of happiness like flame . . . the in¬ 

extinguishable flame. I remember every single thing you 
said.” 

“ It was such nonsense, Barbara.” 

“ But, in a way, it’s true.” 

“ I wish I could make you see,” Anne said slowly. Her 
hands, turned palm upward, were all tenderness. “ For the 
individual, joy is the frailest, most transitory thing on earth. 
And sometime you’ll learn that doesn’t matter. It’s going 
on that counts. * Happiness and pleasure are by-prod¬ 
ucts. . . .’ ” 

“ Ruddy means my happiness, Anne.” 


65 


THE SOUTH DORMER 

“ He’s written his name on you, then.” Her scorn made 
it outrageous ... an abomination for one human be¬ 
ing to stamp himself on another. 

“ He holds all the happiness I ever hope to have in his 
two hands,” Barbara said stubbornly. 

“ You think so, now.” 

“ I know.” 

For a week she hardly left the upper floor. She lay 
long hours in the south dormer, her feet drawn up beneath 
her, tracing initials, her own and Dirck Gannet’s over and 
over on the clear pane and reliving with a mounting in¬ 
tensity of feeling the incidents of those short weeks. The 
high quiet above the trees was peculiarly suited to contem¬ 
plative moods. She recalled deliberately Ruddy’s sig¬ 
nificant, challenging look and the amused gleam that came 
into his eyes at the sight of her sensitive flush as if he 
asked her to share his ridicule of her ingenuousness. She 
remembered his kisses, the thrilling, reckless lift of his red 
mouth, the sound of his laughter, rich and lusty with un¬ 
dertones of ribaldry. No one, she was certain, had ever 
laughed like that before. 

Those days were hard for Anne to bear. She racked 
them with suggestions. 

“ I’ve not heard the piano this long while.” 

“ I don’t feel like playing just now, Anne.” 

******** 

“ Enri Lane called you up to-day. Did you . . .” 

“ Yes, I know. But I didn’t want to see Enri much. Not 
to-day.” 

******** 

“ I could treat you to a matinee, chick, if you’d like it. 
Meet you somewhere afterward for tea.” 

“Do you mind, Anne-dear? I’d rather stay at home, I 
think.” 

Barbara, naturally, never knew just what those days were 
for Anne. They did not discuss Ruddy again. Anne re¬ 
fused to understand about Ruddy and Barbara withdrew be- 


66 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

hind a wall of reticence. When Ruddy had written her, 
when she could take his letter to Anne and prove that he 
loved her with black and white, then, there would be time 
for confidences. Anne would have to see how things were 
when Ruddy wrote. 

It was as if her whole existence hung suspended on one 
thing, on the letter which Ruddy would write her and she 
would show to Anne. She thought about it constantly, 
shaping its phrases and pondering over them, wondering 
what the letter would be like. Sometimes a black despair 
settled down upon her with the conviction that he never 
meant to write to her, that everything was over, that with 
his degradation in the Battalion he had pushed her out of 
his life; but it was a conviction that never lasted for long. 
She felt that he would write, although she sternly held 
herself to the fact that it might be any kind of a letter. 

She could imagine an angry, scornful letter, blaming her 
for not speaking out, uselessly sharing the blame. She could 
think of terrible phrases that burned like acid. Or it might 
be a cold letter, the sort that could have no answer at all, 
that simply opened a black abyss at one’s feet. She knew 
that letter by heart, every sentence of it. On the other 
hand, it might be a cynical letter all disillusionment, al¬ 
though it was hard to think of Ruddy as cynical ... or 
a letter filled with doubts of her and of her worth . . . 

a lofty, cool letter ... a dismally repentant letter such 
as might be written by an early Christian. . . . 

Or it might be the letter she longed to have, a letter like 
his laughter, reckless and merry, like his kisses, a love-letter. 
It was this love-letter she thought of most of all. She 
remembered phrases he had used and strung them together 
to make its sentences. They were comforting. However 
the letter began, in her thoughts, it was always, presently, 
the love-letter. 


II 

The two letters were lying on the arm of the Chesterfield. 
She saw them before she unpinned her hat and the postmark 


67 


THE SOUTH DORMER 

on the upper one . . . “ Wynville.” Was Ruddy at 
Wynville? She drew out her hatpin to slit the envelope 
when she saw his unmistakable script upon the other. At 
the look of that ragged boyish writing, her heart surged 
high and pounded. There was a singing in her ears and 
her lips and mouth were dry as if they had been swabbed 
with cotton. She carried it over to the south dormer and 
sat for a little time, examining all its details, her pulses 
pounding. The postmark was blurred. . . . She turned 

it over again, picked at the sealed flap, working it open 
slowly. 

It was a strangely disappointing thing. Reading it was 
rather like setting one’s teeth into a gorgeous orange, when 
one has been famishing for oranges, and finding it withered 
and tasteless. Ruddy was at a summer camp, he wrote, a 
ranch up in Wyoming. High and dry. The sun shone 
every day and the duff was fair . . . not so good. But 

he was going to stay there high and dry and everything 
until just before college in the fall. Franklin. You stepped 
some at Franklin. It was a blame shame she wasn’t a year 
older and going to Franklin. Would they burn up the burg? 
He would say that they would. If she went to Franklin 
he’d never look at another girl. She was the kind to keep 
all other girls away. (Girls . . . other girls . . .) 

Keep other girls away. He was ready to tell a petrified 
world that he was loco about her. He hoped, in closing, 
that she wouldn’t take any wooden money. 

Well . . . there it was. Her first love-letter. Bar¬ 

bara decided after the fourth reading that it was a love- 
letter, that Ruddy meant it for that. It was just his way of 
saying things. She crushed back a faint scorn of Ruddy, 
refused to let it raise its head. It was altogether an idiotic 
letter, not worth the paper on which it was written but that 
wasn’t Ruddy’s fault. Hidden in its sparse phrases were 
the things that he meant and would have said in the loveliest 
of words if he had known them. 

She went across the room to her desk and took out a 
tablet. After a moment of hesitation, she carried it back to 


68 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

the south dormer, pondered for five minutes, began to write, 
“ My sweetheart:” (He had said that, hadn’t he? “I 
want you for my sweetheart . . . and my wife.”) 

“ From the moment I left Pinelands, I have thought of 
you. . . 

She scrawled raggedly across the page, the phrases that 
had come to her mind day after waiting day. These were 
the sentences she had anticipated, the avowals implied in 
Ruddy’s significant glance and quick, hard kisses, which he 
would have written himself if he had had the words. This 
was Ruddy’s letter, really. Barbara had managed to con¬ 
vince herself of that before she finished the second para¬ 
graph and she signed Ruddy’s name with his magnificent 
flourish. When she read it over, she thrilled to it. It was 
a perfect love-letter, like Ruddy, reckless and extravagant 
and merry. She reread with a slight wrinkling of the 
nose the poor thing the mail had brought her, and, scratching 
a match, she leaned far out of the window and dropped it 
flaming into the bridal wreath below. It was the other, the 
letter she had written for Ruddy, that she put away in the 
square brass box which had held all her childish treasures; 
emptying it of its litter and leaving the letter there alone, 
with the knot of gold-colored ribbon that had held her 
girdle, the day of the pageant, when she had been the 
Interpreter. 

By the time luncheon came up, her spirits were soaring. 
Over their salad, Anne asked absently, “ Did you find your 
letters, Baba? I sent two up this morning,” and lapsed 
immediately into her own meditations. 

Two. There had been two, Barbara remembered. She 
glanced toward the south dormer expecting to see a white 
oblong somewhere and thought perfunctorily that a gust of 
wind might have carried it out of the window. But a 
sudden determination drove even the pretense, of interest 
out of her mind. 

“ Could you give me my July allowance to-day, Anne?” 

“ Barbara, were your letters duns? ” 

" Heavens, Anne. Must you always think of money ? ” 


69 


THE SOUTH DORMER 

A hard look tugged for an instant at Anne’s mouth. 

“ I cannot bear debt. It’s sneaking . . ; never facing 
the facts.” Anne admitted no degrees of honesty. Over¬ 
spending one’s allowance was as dishonorable as peculation. 
“ You must learn to be careful . . . you’re like your 

father, Barbara, with money always slipping through your 
fingers . . 

Should she explain? Anne had the intelligence to search 
behind pretenses and find the fact. Once she heard the 
proposition, she would be quite apt to jump immediately at 
the conclusion that Barbara’s letter had been from Ruddy 
and ask in her cool, amused way if that, were behind Bar¬ 
bara’s preposterous idea. 

“ I dread it for you,” Anne was saying. “ Never to be 
free from the slough of debt, slipping in deeper and deeper. 
It did for Jim, finally. Finished him. And you’re so like 
him, Barbara. Even Evelyn sensed that.” 

“ Anne, listen. I thought I could study this summer and 
make up a year. I thought I could just spend the summer 
in the south dormer, Anne, and . . . maybe go to col¬ 

lege in the fall. It’s the books I want money for, Anne.” 

“ Books! ” 

“ You see, I’ve nothing much to do. There doesn’t seem 
to be anything I want to do. I might as well be studying. 
I’ve the extra credits in French, and if I could pass exams 
in Vergil and math, I could take physics lab as a condition. 
Not try to do anything with music next year. I’ve been 
wondering what I could do with myself.” 

“ I’ve been wondering that, too. You’ve almost turned me 
gray these ten days.” 

“ I’d like going to college, Anne.” She thought of college 
as a high, sunlit plateau, where, when one had accomplished 
the arduous climb over the foothills, the days went by in a 
jumble of golden pleasures. Ruddy . . . books . . . 
basket-ball . . . dancing . . . caps and gowns. “ I 
thought, perhaps, I’d like to go to Franklin. It isn’t far 
away.” 

" It’s a good school,” Anne said briefly. 


70 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


“ Seems as if Pd go wild doing nothing all this summer.” 

“ I know. You’ve always lost yourself in books. I can’t 
see that it would do any harm to try. It wouldn’t matter 
in the least if you didn’t make it. You could go back to 
Pinelands.” 

It would matter tremendously to Barbara if she didn’t 
make it. She had to make it. 

“ I’m tired of Pinelands,” she said. 

“ If you didn’t neglect the exercise. We could play tennis 
together, perhaps. . . .” 

Barbara stood beside the south dormer, drawing through 
her fingers the check Anne had written, a tiny trip-hammer 
going at her temples. The amazing thing was that Anne 
had not guessed. She had accepted the idea at its surface 
value without once thinking of Ruddy. It did not matter 
about proving to Anne now that Ruddy cared. It would be 
better not to talk about him probably, or to mention him 
casually, keeping her own counsel. She felt, for the first 
time, grown-up, poised and secure. 

“All I want is not to be noticed,” she thought. “ I ought 
to be glad that Anne has to spread herself over all St. 
Agatha’s. There’ll be a hundred things crowding me out.” 

She put on the straight silk suit that Anne had bought 
for her and a broad brown sailor. Her best was none too 
good for this adventure. Her eyes sparkled back at her 
from the mirror and her cheeks were flushed softly. She 
went down the stairs with a dancing step. A spray of 
yellow roses was scraping against the gray stone of the old 
house and Barbara picked it, thrusting it into her belt. It 
gave the color that her pongee suit wanted. Finding it 
seeemed a good omen. . . . 

Ill 

She was sitting on the top of a ladder in a second-hand 
book-shop. She had been left to herself by the shopkeeper, 
a spectacled and chubby sage, oily and sallow with gray 
hair curling about his ears. School books were at the back, 
he explained, having perused her list, and he pointed them 


THE SOUTH DORMER 71 

out above the rows of technical volumes. Then he went 
back to the dog-eared magazine he had left, face downward 
on a high stool. He climbed up on the stool and sat, bent 
over, his elbows on his knees, oblivious of her. 

It was hot close to the ceiling and two flies buzzing back 
and forth across her nose annoyed her; moreover, the books 
seemed elusive, like nothing so much as the things that 
Alice had tried to buy in the shop of the spectacled, Knitting 
Sheep. Barbara had that sensation of seeking an article 
from shelf to shelf and having it disappear before her. She 
sat sidewise on the ladder, reaching ahead of her as far as 
she could before she descended and pushed it on. The 
light was poor and she had to take down every book sepa¬ 
rately to see what book it was. They were huddled to¬ 
gether in a helter-skelter fashion and their rough boards 
made a curious sound scraping against the books on either 
side ... a sound that thrilled her with secret excite¬ 
ment. 

A Vergil fell open on her lap. The initials on the fly¬ 
leaf, fitted with precise draftsmanship into a diamond¬ 
shaped monogram, were Ruddy’s initials . . . D. H. G. 

Dirck Harrington Gannet. Barbara saw them with a shock 
of recognition, amazed that for an hour she had not been 
thinking of Ruddy at all. Then the gladness of remember¬ 
ing him surged through her . . . remembering his bold 

eyes, his laughter, his hard, young arms. She sat very 
still on the ladder, not seeing the shop. 

" It’s good luck,” she whispered to herself. “ It isn’t 
Ruddy’s book, but I can pretend that it’s an omen. . . .” 

And she held her breath, inching along the edge of the 
shelves fingering the books. There were a half-dozen be¬ 
side the Vergil, but she took them all. They were thick 
with dust and she wiped them gently, one by one, with her 
handkerchief. The Vergil she opened, her fingers trembling 
and stared at the first line. “Arma virumque cano. . . ” 

And suddenly the thing that Anne had believed was true. 
She had forgotten in those June days while her brain had 
been filled with Ruddy, the lure of ancient lays, the beauty 


72 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

of a printed page. Now the old joy came again, beckoning 
her into that dim garden where its stored treasure lay. The 
hot air came through the door in waves, carrying the smell 
of asphalt and the confused noises of the street; but Barbara 
did not notice. She opened the book wide on her knee and 
began to read. 


V 


FRANKLIN 

I 

The first person Barbara saw at Franklin was Mark Hale. 
As she dropped from the train, she caught a glimpse of his 
lean brown face standing out from the background of the 
brick station; and remembered that Anne had said he was 
to be an instructor . . . zoology, botany, geology, 

something. She had forgotten all Anne had said in her 
eager planning. She was absorbed in the cold dread of 
failing to pass her examinations and the sharp sweet dread 
of seeing Ruddy. All the way up, she sat alone in the 
train, unable to read, hardly able to think, and as Franklin 
drew nearer, she found that the palms of her hands were 
hot and her heart was beating furiously. She was not 
particularly glad to see Mark Hale. 

“ Doctor Linton wrote me to look out for you.” He took 
her bag and walked with her toward the street. “ I thought 
you might like Mrs. Wilson’s . . . though it means a 

roommate. Doctor Linton said you wanted a roommate. 
I’ll go along with you if I may.” 

She would have preferred to go alone. She refused a 
taxi and walked beside him in silence, remote and grave. 
Actually she was thinking intently of Ruddy. Time after 
time as they went along the tree-lined streets her breath 
caught expectantly at the sight of a tall figure. The campus 
had already taken on the rush and color of term-time. A 
cue of figures stretched down the steps of a high building 
and out upon the cement walks, white in the blazing sun¬ 
light. Bareheaded, white-skirted girls crossed the open 
spaces, their bright sweaters clear splotches of color against 


74 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

the smooth green; bareheaded boys sat in groups on the 
steps of severe stucco houses. There was a ceaseless tread 
of feet, passing by. Anywhere on these streets, she might 
find Ruddy, the high, blue afternoon the mere background 
for his reckless face and his hair that had the red-gold of a 
painting by Tintoretto. She imagined walking with him 
under the harvest moon of some winey night. . . . 

Hale’s voice, “ You’re thin, Barbara. There’s a point to 
your chin.” 

“ Anne says so. ‘ So thin, so thin,’ is her regular matin 
chant. I’ve studied all summer long . . . fifteen hours 

a day, sometimes. Why shouldn’t I be thin ? ” 

“ Why should you study like that ? ” 

“ I had a year to make up.” 

A crisp reply halting inquiries. They passed a row of 
houses, the Alpha Delt, tall pillared, the Psi U, a Colonial 
cottage . . . Delta Gam . . . The Barracks . . . 

a frat house where, Hale said, he stayed himself. 

“ Geoff was here last year. My brother. You remember 
at Pinelands ... ? ” 

“ Where is he now ? ” 

“ Illinois. He wanted some special work in Agriculture.” 

“Agriculture” 

“ Geoff’s to be a farmer, I think.” 

“ Is he?” No reason for keeping up even the pretense 
of interest in a farmer. A hick, Ruddy would call him. 
Mrs. Wilson’s had a round wooden tower and a vine-draped 
porch. A woman with a firm mouth and an implacable 
white streak through her dark hair came to the door. 

Barbara turned shy at once. It was always difficult for 
her to meet people in a material basis. Easy enough to fall 
into talk with some rapt boy or girl who chanced to sit 
beside her at a play or concert, sharing the joys of the 
spirit, and hard, infinitely hard to ask a clerk to name a 
money price. 

“ Miss Fallows . . . for the tower-room,” Mrs. Wil¬ 

son said much as if she were announcing a train. She ac¬ 
corded Mark a grudged graciousness and led Barbara up a 


FRANKLIN 75 

wide stair into a square hall from which a narrower, en¬ 
closed stairway mounted to the third floor. Outside a door, 
Barbara stumbled over a suitcase, plastered with hotel 
labels. Mrs. Wilson opened the door. “ Miss Fallows, 
Miss Payne.’' 

“ My little roommate comes . . Miss Payne said. 
“Ah . . . you pretty thing.” 

She stood before the bureau rubbing her face with 
some scented cream and a very soiled rag. Her street suit 
lay crumpled on the floor, her hat on top of the empty book¬ 
case, her kimono over the end of the bed. She was a thick- 
waisted girl with scanty brown hair and humorous, narrow 
eyes. Her plump shoulders were creased with pink satin- 
straps and she smelled heavily of perfume. 

“ You are a pretty thing, you know,” she went on coolly. 
“ Curl up there on the bed and tell me every little thing.” 

Barbara smiled at her. “ I can’t do that. Mark Hale is 
down-stairs waiting to take me to the Tea-shop.” 

“ Oh, provoking. I wanted you to come and help me get 
at shopping for this room, y’know. It’s impossible enough 
as it is.” 

It was a room, Barbara thought, that might have held a 
princess prisoner. It had the charm of the south dormer, 
high and quiet, above the trees. A semicircle of window in 
the corner gave it an aspect of spaciousness, a study-table 
stood beside another window, flanked by a wide bureau, 
two couches were pushed against right-angled walls and in 
the corner was the empty, hanging bookcase. 

“ We’ll have to paint everything . . . ivory, I think 

. . . and buy one of those cretonne rugs in soft greens 

and cretonnes with big splashes of rose in them for the 
windows . . . adorable with your quincy skin. Won’t 

it be quaint ? ” 

“Won’t it cost a lot?” Barbara ventured. 

Miriam Payne froze. “ I don’t know, I’m sure. Per¬ 
haps you don’t care for it.” 

“ Oh, I do,” said Barbara slowly. She had never had 
silver fittings in a traveling case. She hardly dared hope 


76 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

that even in the future, there would be London labels on 
her Russia leather suitcase. “ I’d love it.” 

“ Why,” considered Miriam, “ can’t I go take tea with 
this man of yours and snatch you away for shopping after¬ 
ward ? ” 

It seemed a delightful settlement. Mark took them to a 
crowded tea-room, brilliant with color and found a table 
at the end of the room close to a mirror that filled the nar¬ 
row wall. Barbara, eyeing the crowd that surged about 
them, hearing gay greetings, examining the mosaic of blue 
and green and rose on the walls, listened inattentively to 
Miriam’s perfunctory chat with Hale. She was the eldest 
of three daughters . . . her father a district judge, 
rather involved in the political game . . . she had 
meant to go to Vassar . . . she touched in a mature 

manner on her summer spent abroad with the French teacher 
from her eastern boarding-school, a queer old thing with 
spidery arms, exasperatingly dull. Miriam’s voice rose in 
a rush of bright crackling words, a rich voice full of life. 
Barbara liked her. She took in the details of the wrinkled 
broadcloth gown, the costly hat, crowded carelessly down 
on her hair, the platinum watch on her plump wrist. She 
was a girl whose personality glowed. When she talked of 
Kew, one saw her in the center of the Gardens in the 
midst of splendid sunshine and behind her somewhere in 
the background, a thin, yellow little Frenchwoman waving 
spidery arms. 

As they rose to go, Barbara saw Ruddy. He was stand¬ 
ing outside the long glass door, comparing his watch care¬ 
lessly with the college clock that shot up above the trees. 
Standing there in the hot sunlight, he had a unique reality. 
All the room, the people at the tables, Miriam Payne, Mark 
Hale taking his change from the cashier’s shallow receiver, 
were like shadows. She seemed to move through a soft 
mass of shadows, pushing toward the door, until, at the end 
of a long time, it opened and Ruddy’s glance, turned toward 
her casually, fastened on her face. A quiver crossed his 
own. It was no more than a tremor, a momentary flicker 


FRANKLIN 77 

of an eyelash, an almost invisible veiling of eyes grown 
brilliant. But it left Barbara exulting. He was glad. 

The miracle of their understanding rushed back, freeing 
her from shyness. Miriam moved away beside Mark Hale 
and she dropped behind with Ruddy. Further and further 
behind. She wore an imperturbable dignity . . . but 

beneath it, she was aware of a beauty almost greater than 
she could bear. This was happiness. This was joy, clear 
and sparkling as the sunshine falling about them. What¬ 
ever else she was to forget, she promised herself that she 
would remember this. 


II 

Where the path forked above the lake, a leafless tree 
showed in silhouette against the morning sky. Ruddy 
walked slowly, his head hung forward, his hands tucked 
into pockets under the rolled edge of his sweater. 

“ Then you didn’t get a note this morning, Babs ? ” 

“ Were you really expecting me to have a bid, Ruddy ? ” 
Her question held a careful lightness but in her heart there 
was a choked dismay. Her will hardened against it as she 
had forced it to harden against all the stabs of the past 
weeks. Ruddy’s anxious inquiries . . . “ Had she 

been asked to luncheon at the Delta Gam house? Did she 
know any of the Thetas ? Wasn’t there someone in Chicago 
who would write to the Phi Mus ? ” 

There had been from the first a bewildering indifference. 
Barbara did not know why. It had never occurred to her 
that she would not have everything that a college could 
offer; and she was the sorority type, Hamish had said. 
She told herself hotly that it could not possibly matter. 
What difference did it make? Wasn’t it enough that she 
had passed her examinations and was at college? With 
Ruddy? Wasn’t it all just as she had dreamed? 

“ The thing’s practically over,” he said laconically. 
“ Nelle Palmer’s gone Gamma Phi. Maybe, even now if 
you made up to Nelle * . 


78 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

She couldn’t, of course, make up to Nelle. Nelle had 
surmised with surprising accuracy the reason for Barbara’s 
appearance at Franklin a year before her time and seemed 
to resent it. She begged—distrustfully—for silence as to 
their spring escapade. The Crowd was a thing of the past. 
She tried to believe that she did not care about Nelle’s 
frostiness or the neglect that the older girls accorded her; 
and she might have achieved it for herself. But here was 
Ruddy to be considered. The sharpest hurt in the whole 
miserable business was Ruddy’s mortification. She felt that 
she had failed to measure up to his very simple standards, 
that while he pitied her . . . she loathed being pitied 

. . . he must still despise her in his heart; and there 

grew up in her a strange fear, a doubt of herself that ate 
like acid through her joy and left an ineradicable scar upon 
her soul. She bore it stoically, however. . . . 

“Chin in the air, Spitfire?” Ruddy inquired. “You do 
think a lot of yourself, don’t you?” 

“ Why not ? ” Why should one think little of oneself ? 
Would Ruddy champion a self that cringed, dismayed and 
fearful? Not Ruddy. Ruddy wanted pride, color . . . 

pep. 

“ Listen, Babs ... we gotta scheme. Hamish and 
Ned. Talking it over last night. Make a sorta secret body¬ 
guard . . . see? For you. Somep’n new in this li’l 

old town. We’re all that are left from the Crowd, from 
last year. Now there’s to be the Three of us . . . 

buddies, we’ll say, for all we’re going different frats . . . 

and there’s to be you. We’ll have a pin and a whistle. 
Ham’s for it, now Dreka’s gone and Ned has smashed 
anyhow with Nelle. The Dauntless Three. Three fellers’d 
give one frail a whirl, I’ll say. Tickets for every game and 
flowers and dates. . . .” 

“ It would look funny, wouldn’t it ? ” 

“ Makes nothing. We’ll fix it so you have the best time 
of any girl at Franklin ... a smashing old time, I’ll 
tell the petrified world. But you’ll haveta play up. Make a 
mystery, see ? Go with no one outside the Three, see ? No 


FRANKLIN 79 

date outside for you . . . and at dances it’s to be just 

the Three, y’understand.” 

Barbara understood perfectly. Ruddy’s pitying eyes on 
her face. . . . Still, it was a thing that lent itself to 
the beauty of old imagery, a living fairy-tale. A princess 
surrounded by a Dauntless Three, accepting their fealty, 
wearing their colors. And Ruddy had planned it. To take 
the place of a bid. . . . 

“ You’re dear to me,” she cried. “ You’re just . . . 

dear, Ruddy.” 


Ill 

After the hockey game was over they skated down the 
stretch of ice that had been swept for play. Barbara was 
in the center between Hamish and Ruddy with Ned 
Dalrymple at the end, setting the pace . . . the Daunt¬ 

less Three. They were quite alone on the ice and she could 
not help wondering how they looked to the crowd lingering 
along the lake path, one slim swaying girl borne along 
swiftly by those three six-footers. Their strong arms 
held like steel. Her body moved without effort, her feet 
seemed just to touch the ice. It was like the skim and dip 
of swallows. She laughed aloud suddenly and they echoed 
her laughter with a shout that went ringing up against the 
empty bleachers. 

At the far end they unclasped hands and spread out into 
a thin line, falling into a slow swinging stroke. A flat gray 
sky hung about the trees like a shroud and a film of snow, 
drifting before the wind was already powdering the blue 
ice. At the end of the pond Miriam stood waiting, black 
and shapeless in her fur coat, the bank rising behind her 
sharply like a wall of snow. Miriam never skated or 
tramped, never shared their perilous dashes across the ice 
in Ruddy’s oval yacht. Only indoors, she added a sensuous 
note, achieving without any particular beauty an effect of 
color and warmth. She played elder sister to the Three, 
laying her hands softly on their coat-sleeves, speaking to 
them in her smooth, throaty voice; but alone with Barbara 


80 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

she maintained an air of restrained amusement at their 
eccentric devotion. Those green boys. 

Barbara accepted the amusement. The devotion of the 
Dauntless Three was eccentric, a bizarre chord crashing 
across the smooth harmony of existence, but a chord to 
which she vibrated. She was conspicuous on the campus 
and she knew it. If she did not like it, she stiffened to 
accept conspicuousness as the alternative to insignificance. 
She could never afford to be insignificant with Ruddy at 
her elbow. The queer, artificial popularity which the affair 
with the Dauntless Three gave her, seemed to please Ruddy ; 
and more than anything else in the world she wanted to 
please Ruddy. . . . 

So she wore the curious little silver pin they had had 
made for the four of them, explaining it to no one, not 
even Myrrh . . . “ making a mystery/’ When the 
minor strain from the Narcissus floated up to her as she 
sat at a classroom window, she met a row of inquiring eyes 
quite calmly. She sat in the same seat at every football 
game, wearing the chrysanthemums the Three had sent her 
and met them by appointment daily in the post-office at its 
most crowded moment, chatting with them as they leaned 
on the railing, looming grotesquely tall in the low-ceilinged 
room. She permitted them to divide her dancing card 
gravely between them. Even the robbers could not outwit 
the Three. It was understood that there would always be 
one waiting to cut in. 

She experienced a continuous hot excitement. In the 
mirror she faced starry eyes and cheeks flushed with bril¬ 
liant color; but she had most of the time a sensation of 
unreality, of struggling through a choking fantastic fog to 
find again the vivid substantiality of an hour alone with 
Ruddy. She made no attempt to understand what was hap¬ 
pening to her. It was enough to follow the lead of the 
Three, to hold their allegiance, to experience hours like this 
when they skated swiftly through the cold January dusk 
and went strolling back at dinner-time across a dusky 
campus. 


FRANKLIN 81 

She was progressively sensitive to Ruddy’s moods. To¬ 
night she felt him walking contentedly with her, her skates 
clinking musically as he swung their straps, the dry snow 
crunching under their feet. Once he caught her wrist and 
unbuttoning her glove stripped it off her hand and put his 
lips to its hollow for a long moment. “ Babs,” he whis¬ 
pered, “ I ... I love every bit of you. * . .” And 

the next, he lighted a cigarette. 

“ Are you . . . are you smoking . . . now ? ” 

she asked with a queer breathlessness which had nothing 
whatever to do with smoking. 

“ Why not ? ” The light from the match flared against 
his face and he looked down slantingly from his great 
height. “ What’s the big idea, Babs ? ’Fraid it’ll stunt my 
growth ? ” 

She laughed a little. “ You’re coming over after dinner.” 

“ Not to-night,” Ruddy mumbled. “ Previous engage¬ 
ment. Sorry.” 

" Did you get it? ” Myrrh laughed as she tucked her hand 
into the crook of Barbara’s arm. “ Turned you down, eh ? 
They’re asked to Alpha Phi to-night.” 

“The Three? Ned and Ruddy and Ham?” 

" I don’t know about Ned. Ruddy’s going with Dod 
Lewis. You can’t stop them, Little One. Every mother’s 
daughter is out for herself. And the Three made no prom¬ 
ises to you.” 

They were quite free, of course. Dod Lewis was a 
lovely thing, white-skinned and vivid. Everything seemed 
to drop away from Barbara but her indifference. She 
nodded dumbly and went past Miriam into the dining-room. 
The food on her plate was quite uneatable. 

IV 

Miriam was armored by a splendid egotism. She was 
several years older than Barbara and a conscious step above 
the middle-west provincialism all about her. She had an 
air of amused superiority to the pastimes of the campus; 
and her sophistication, her cleverness, her financial inde- 


82 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

pendence rendered comparatively easy on the collective 
mind, the impression of unaffected indifference. 

Barbara copied that indifference to the lift of an eye¬ 
brow. Her intimacy with Miriam served as an impregnable 
defense. They stood aloof in a somewhat conspicuous iso¬ 
lation, ignoring the cheerful advances of other girls and 
falling into a pointed silence when they were approached 
by an outsider. Except for Miriam and the Dauntless 
Three, Barbara had no intimacies anywhere. And it did 
not occur to her that that mattered. She had never had 
intimacies. She had never had even a girl chum until she 
roomed with Miriam. From the old dreamy days of the 
south dormer, she had been alone, living in a glowing inner 
existence that took no note of outward realities. 

Now, she clung to Miriam. For all her untidiness, Myrrh 
had a keen discrimination in the matter of clothes. She 
dressed expensively, wearing charmeuse the moment char- 
meuse was in vogue, changing to georgette before the or¬ 
dinary had discarded charmeuse. In their first six months 
together Barbara relegated to the scrap-heap most of the 
simplicities she had taken for granted hitherto. Miriam 
suggested, declaring that Barbara's vividness could be un¬ 
derlined subtly only by some opulent bit of color. Ruddy 
always praised the things that Miriam selected. . . . 

But it wasn't only clothes. Miriam found savor in all 
the niceties, the dainty foods of expensive restaurants, the 
atmosphere of luxury, the sense of some personal demand, 
superior to those of commonplace people, which she made 
and which could be satisfied only with the best. She took a 
sensuous delight in selecting that shade of pink in flowers 
that would stand out gorgeously against the ivory walls of 
the tower-room; in the candies that she kept in the Chinese 
basket on their study table, in her heavy, deckle-edged writ¬ 
ing-paper, the die of her monogram, the book-plate she 
chose for her library. 

“ White hyacinths to feed my soul/' she quoted and spoke 
scornfully of the fleshly appetite that asked for two loaves 
of bread. 


FRANKLIN 83 

She carried Barbara with her. Whatever Miriam decreed 
hyacinthian, they bought. Their room acquired a real dis¬ 
tinction of color and arrangement. Miriam constantly 
added trifles ... an adorable lamp, a cushioned wicker 
chair, a bit of real cloisonne. Miriam suggested trips into 
town and they would see some play, dawdle through a 
dinner at a fashionable tea-shop and slip back to Franklin 
without letting Anne know. At first it bothered Barbara 
. . . not letting Anne know. But after all, it didn’t 

matter. 

Miriam knew much less of music than Barbara but more 
of history and art. They liked books, both of them, and 
Barbara in particular, to whom a printed page was anodyne 
for all the frets of living, threw herself into her work with 
a passionate absorption. She and Miriam read intently on 
the wings of odd moments. They browsed about the Co-op 
book-shop, affecting radical pamphlets, glutting themselves 
indiscriminately with books. . . . Hauptmann, Schnitz- 

ler, Shaw, Brieux, Elinor Glyn, Saint-Simon, Ellen Key, 
George Moore, Havelock Ellis, Rupert Brooke, Rupert 
Hughes, Ezra Pound, Strindberg, Eddie Guest . . . 

buying lavishly, making each other presents. 

In the tower-room, they had long talks, reaching usually 
a final confused state when they hardly knew what they had 
talked about. Usually it was Barbara who played listener, 
while Miriam drifted into the discussion of her own in¬ 
tensities, picking emotions to pieces and giving each incident 
a romantic value. 

“ That man I told you about at Lucerne. Sometimes Eve 
wondered what it was in me that drew him. Like a lode- 
stone, Babs. I simply absorbed him. He said so. . . . 

He had one of these tense, velvety voices and his eyes 
looked straight at you. I shall never forget some of the 
things he said. Because he couldn’t have said them to 
most women. Only, I understood. ‘ Hatred of the bour¬ 
geois is the beginning of virtue/ he said that. And he said, 
* Humanity is a pigsty where the liars and hypocrites and 
obscene in spirit congregate; and it has been so ever since 


84 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


the great Jew conceived it/ We ought to be reading Spin- 
garn, Babs, and Dreiser/’ 

“ I hate Dreiser. So . . . hard.” 

“ You’re awfully young, some ways, Babs. I’m not. He 
said he could talk to me as he had never talked to another 
woman because there was something old in my soul, some¬ 
thing far back that called to him. We danced every other 
dance, those nights; and then, after the dancing we’d go 
out and talk . . . lovely black nights and the lake all 

shadows. I will admit, we gave his wife some bad half- 
hours.” 

“ His wife? ” 

“ She was an insignificant little thing,” Miriam said. 
“ She couldn’t possibly understand him. He’ll probably 
kick himself free. He ought to.” 

The year passed with bewildering swiftness. At times, 
it seemed to Barbara that she had entered a maze and was 
running through it blindly with no idea where its twistings 
and turnings led. 

V 

“ Myrrh, listen. Are you awake? Singing, somewhere.” 
Barbara was lying on the edge of her couch, her ears 
strained to catch the vagrant sound. It was coming nearer, 
now broken, now clear and steady. “ They’re serenading 
someone. . . .” 

She crept out of bed and slipped into her kimono, glanc¬ 
ing at the clock on her bureau. Two o’clock. The floor 
was cold under her bare feet and the wind coming through 
the open window, fanned her body. A clear tenor carried 
the air, a lusty rollicking baritone shouted harmoniously. 

“ It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, 

It’s a long way to go, 

It’s a long, long way to Tipperary . . .” 

“ I love the tenderness of their selection.” 

“ Myrrh, it’s the Dauntless Three, I think. They’re 
back.” 


FRANKLIN 85 

“ I wish,” Miriam said in a small indifferent voice, “ that 
they’d take themselves off. There isn’t one of them on the 
key.” 

The song ended in breaking laughter. Beneath her 
Barbara heard a window cautiously opened and the soft 
sound of applause. A new song started. She could just 
see them standing under a large tree on the comer. She 
curled on the window-seat, cushions under her body, her 
head resting in the crook of her arm. Old familiar imagery 
touched her thought ... a princess listening from her 
turret, troubadours singing in the night. . . . Her 
senses and all her thoughts grew languorous. 

“ Get away from that window, my love and my dove, 

Get away from that window, I say . . .” 

“ They can see you, Babs.” 

“ They can’t either. In this dark gown ? ” 

“ They wouldn’t be singing that.” 

“Of course they would. They’d sing it anyway.” 

“ High-school stuff.” 

“ Sweet dreams, Ladies. . . .” The song began 
drifting away down the quiet street. 

“ Sweet dreams, Ladies . . . we’re going to leave you 

now . . . 

. . . roll along . . . roll along . . .” 

Further and further into silence. It was delicious to be 
back. Barbara sat for a long time looking out into the 
September night. 


VI 

Bills. Barbara tucked them into a special box in her 
desk as they came, but one cold, rainy afternoon in May, 
she took the whole sheaf of them to the window-seat and 
began to check them up with a dogged desperation . . . 

the accumulation of two college years. She had kept the 


86 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

afternoon and evening disengaged for Ruddy and Ruddy 
had telephoned about three, pleading an engagement. 

“ Made it the first of the week, Babs, and forgot about 
it when I was talking to you yesterday. Favor to another 
fellow, really.” 

She saw no particular reason to believe his bland ex¬ 
cuse. 

“ It doesn’t matter in the least . . she answered 

stiffly polite. “ No, I can’t go down for dinner to-morrow 
night. I’ve a quiz. . . . Oh, no, Ruddy, I’m not going, 
really. And don’t say that to me. I don’t have to.” 

The numb sense of indifference was on her, like pain 
under a narcotic, as she went back up-stairs. There were 
her bills. She could spend the afternoon over her bills. 

As a matter of fact, there were a good many bills . . . 

a bill for books at the Co-op about which the Co-op was 
becoming unpleasant ... a bill for class dues . . . 

a dentist’s bill due since before Christmas ... a bill 
for her spring hat . . . for a blouse ... for the 
dress Miriam had helped her buy to wear at the Dramatic 
Club playlet, a dress the color of a golden-hearted rose. 

For that hour she had known a new triumph, her tiny 
world at her feet. She swayed them, their eyes shining 
with hers, their laughter echoing her own. When they 
brought her out to take her curtain, she stood quite still 
in the middle of the brilliantly lighted stage, her heart 
striking hard against her side, her whole body trembling. 
The great basket of flowers handed to her over the foot¬ 
lights had come from the Dauntless Three. They were 
proud of her. . . . 

Afterward, when they were taking her away for a supper 
at the Tea-shop . . . that familiar basement establish¬ 

ment with its tete-a-tete tables and dim, parchment-shaded 
lights, a man had delayed them at the stage door. He had 
been wandering in and out of the wings most of the even¬ 
ing ... a short, squat man of thirty with features 
rudely chiseled and obscured by flesh and expressive dark 
eyes giving a baffling accent to his commonplace face. Not 


FRANKLIN 87 

exactly a commonplace face. A face like a folk-song, 
crude and inspiring. 

“ My liddle card,” he said, presenting it. “ John Garsh.” 

He made his point slowly. He was manager of a com¬ 
pany that had been playing that week in Franklin and had 
laid off the night scheduled for the college play. He was 
starting a summer venture of his own in Chicago. 

“ Liddle Theater. . . . Like y’understand, The 
Provincetown Players . . . Washington Square. Clever 
liddle plays. Gifted amachures . . . and a New York 
star . . . young, for advertisement. And you, Miss 

Fallus. I could maybe make ingenues of you.” 

Before he had finished Ruddy was pulling her away. She 
had a confused sense of flickering lights, of people stand¬ 
ing about, staring, of a woman, with whom she vaguely 
connected John Garsh, waiting at the end of the dim hall 
under a big hat, of the night wind coming through the 
opening door. The Three were roaring. Ruddy’s face had 
turned darkly red, flaming with the heat of his mirth. 
And when Garsh had pacifically persisted, they shouldered 
him aside. . . . Barbara smiled a little, remembering 

their laughter. Then she came back with a little start to 
her bills. A month’s rent due Mrs. Wilson ... a bill 
at the Tea-shop for sundaes ... a florist’s bill. 

“ How much do I owe you, Myrrh ? ” 

“ Heavens above. How can I tell ? I haven’t dunned you 
for it, have I ? ” 

“ I think it’s a lot.” She added figures . . . put 

down nine and carry seven, put down five and carry three. 
It couldn’t be as much as that. It couldn’t. . . . 

“ It’s around fifty dollars. . . .” 

“Fifty” 

Miriam leaned back in her chair and looked at Barbara 
steadily. She felt the look like a play of electricity along 
her nerves. 

“ Who called you?” 

“ Ruddy Gannet.” 

“ Break your date ? ” 


88 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


“ Yes.” 

“ He seems to be doing it rather often.” 

“ Oh ... I don’t know. I’ve no string on 
him. . . .” She wanted to be free of Myrrh’s insistent 

questionings. She had grown used to Ruddy’s absences 
more or less. Hamish or Ned so easily slipped into his 
place. They were never very long. After an interval of a 
few days he would call her up. . . . 

“ * It is excessively pleasant to be a man’s first love,’ ” 
Myrrh quoted amusedly. “ ‘ But the woman is wise beyond 
her books, who chooses to be his last.’ Perhaps you began 
a trifle early.” 

“ Perhaps. You’re a nut, Myrrh. Wait till I get this 
straightened out, will you ? ” 

She went to her desk and dispiritedly drew a blank sheet 
of paper toward her. She would have to write Anne. 
There was no other way out of such a mess. She dreaded 
it because Anne’s love was at once tender and hard. To 
love, for Anne, meant to judge not less but more severely. 

“ But she’s had the money from my father’s estate,” 
Barbara thought, “ all this time. I’m eighteen. It’s mine 
really. . . .” 

She sat, stabbing her pen into the blotter, and trying to 
remember her father; but it seemed to her that she came up 
against a remarkably blank wall. There had been a picture 
of him in Anne’s album with the rest of ’ 94 . She could 
remember lying in the south dormer and studying it seri¬ 
ously ... a sensitive face, narrowed by a dark Van 
Dyke, a straight nose, high on the bridge like her own, 
eyes framed with dark lashes, laughing eyes, pleasure-lov¬ 
ing eyes. Anne said often that Barbara was like him but 
beyond that statement, the things that Anne had said became 
in retrospect a vague mass of generalities. He had been a 
lawyer. . . . He and Evelyn were married before he 

left with his regiment for Cuba in ’ 98 . They had been di¬ 
vorced when Barbara was about four and Evelyn had mar¬ 
ried again ... an Italian music teacher in New York. 
Jim had brought Barbara to Anne. . . . The truth was 


FRANKLIN 89 

she had hardly thought of him as a factor in her life, since 
her little girlhood. Now, she wanted to know. Necessity 
was driving her. She had the right to know. She began 
to write swiftly. 

“ Anne-dear : 

“ I am wondering how much I am worth. There is 
something, isn’t there? Has been always? I’ve thought it 
might be a good deal, and just now I do need money aw¬ 
fully. 

“ I hate telling you, Anne-darling, but the truth is I’m 
in debt. There are so many things you have to have, these 
days, so much more than a girl needed in your day, Anne, 
that I’m afraid you don’t quite understand. And I have so 
little to do with all the time. Myrrh has a corking allow¬ 
ance and can’t keep within it, never pretends to. After 
this, of course, I’ll be more careful. Once I am straight 
with the world I shall manage better. It is hard to tell how 
it happened this time, except that I needed things. I’ve a 
dentist bill, for instance, that I haven’t touched . . . 
and I kept slipping in deeper and deeper. 

“ The point really is that I haven’t enough to do with. 
I wish you would loosen the purse-strings a little, Anne. 
They’re my purse-strings, aren’t they, after all ? And surely 
I shall never need the money quite so much as I do now.” 

She slipped out in the early evening and mailed it. The 
rain had stopped but there was still a mist that hid the out¬ 
line of familiar buildings and blurred their lighted win¬ 
dows to smears of dull yellow. The pavement looked vel¬ 
vety with the cool spring rain and the lights of cars left 
pools of gold on the black. 

Barbara’s spirits rose with a bound. The writing of the 
letter to Anne, difficult as it had been, seemed in an inex¬ 
plicable fashion to have settled everything. She had shifted 
the burden. Anne would find a way out for her. She felt 
suddenly free . . . free of debt, free of doubt and 

dismay. She thought of Ruddy and a happy warmth went 


90 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

through her. She trusted him. She knew him almost as 
she knew herself and, whatever Myrrh might say, she 
trusted him. She walked out of her way to pass his fra¬ 
ternity house, half-believing that she might catch a glimpse 
of him, but the curtains were drawn and there was no one 
in sight. 


VII 

It was that May when khaki suddenly appeared every¬ 
where, on the cars, on the campus, in restaurants and 
theaters, on the curbs in the city where bulky recruiting 
officers strolled back and forth in their significant olive 
drab. Chapel began with the national anthem and the flags 
of the Allies hung in colorful masses behind the president’s 
chair. Often in the classroom the talk broke from sched¬ 
uled subjects and came back to the war, speculative talk with 
an undercurrent of intensity. Talk went on everywhere on 
the campus and excited groups of boys, clustered on the 
steps of the Library, watched the bulletin-board at the street 
comer and walked along the graveled paths gesticulating 
vigorously. A group of Seniors slipped away one even¬ 
ing. . . . 

Khaki appeared at St. Agatha’s. The young Chief went 
abroad on Hospital Organization and Halforth came back 
from premature retirement. Anne Linton was made a staff 
surgeon. The war, it seemed, was that opportunity for 
which Anne had kept every fiber stretched. Her new labors 
pyramided on the old. When the others went, the 
younger house-physician, the interns, most of the nurses, 
Anne merely added hours to her working day. She lec¬ 
tured to the Emergency Corps, took her turn at the First 
Aid talks to classes of women clamoring to do something 
and quite vague about what they wished to do, supervised 
the work that was sent out of the Red Cross unit which 
worked in the rooms on the first floor of the old house. In 
odd moments she knitted in an ecstasy. The handiwork she 
had loved, had meaning now. Rows of even, exquisite 
stitches grew under her flying hands. 


FRANKLIN 


91 


The stir all about her hardly touched Barbara. It sur¬ 
rounded her, a vast maelstrom of which her generation 
seemed, somehow, the dead center. Knitting socks . . . 

packing boxes . . . working over messy wads of cotton 

with the air filled with fluff, who wanted to do that? If 
one could have gone across gloriously and been in the thick 
of it. . . . But they took no women under twenty-five. 

Twenty-five! It seemed to Barbara at eighteen an impossi¬ 
ble age beyond which life would stretch like a dusty road. 

She grew a little breathless sometimes when she saw 
the flag and her heart beat faster whenever the band began 
“ The Star-Spangled Banner/’ She read the headlines of 
the papers and many of the war books flooding the coun¬ 
try. And she felt horror and fear, but it was all vicarious. 
It had nothing to do with her life. She felt excite¬ 
ment, but it was the excitement of watching a conflagra¬ 
tion on the horizon line . . . something infinitely re¬ 

mote. 


VIII 

They were dancing during Fourth Hour in the narrow 
hall above the Co-op store . . . one of the helter-skelter 

dances that Hamish McLaurin was always fixing up at 
chapel time. Barbara had raced up there with him after 
history class. In the dressing-room mirror, she had been 
startled by her face, the dark hair tumbling over her fore¬ 
head, her eyes burning with a restless light. She was fight¬ 
ing with a sick sense of depression. As she sat at the 
piano, alternately watching the dancers and the street be¬ 
low, she felt through all her quiet body the pulsing of in¬ 
tense feeling. 

The Dauntless Three were there. How well they danced, 
those big fellows. Hamish passed her, guiding Dod Lewis, 
and Myrrh was dancing with Ruddy, her eyes narrowed to 
a sensuous gleam. Ned Dalrymple was trying a new step, 
accenting the rhythm. He lifted his voice and sang above 
the piano. . . . 


92 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


“Everybody’s doin’ it. Doin’ what? Turkey trot . . . 
And the bunny wiggle and the elephant glide. 

But I’ve done ’em all now and I’m sat-is-fied 
For I’ve done the very last, the very best of all 
An’ that’s the jelly-quiver at the 
Mardi-Gras Ball. . . 

The girl in his arms turned limp with laughter. Barbara 
laughed, too. She was part of this and she loved it. She 
hated its ending, even for the summer. Ned had hinted 
that another month would find him training. Things would 
be different. There were hardly twenty dancing in the 
room, but they filled her world. 

When someone came to relieve her at the piano she took 
out a letter from Anne that had been in her post-office box 
when she dashed in to meet Hamish, and turning it over 
slipped a finger under the sealed flap. There was only a 
page covered with Anne’s even writing. 

“ Dear Barbara : 

" Your father left nothing. He went through every¬ 
thing he had and more. From some insurance, left by 
Evelyn’s father, you have an income of about $70 a month, 
but it is in trust and neither you nor I can touch it. I am 
sorry that you haven’t had enough. . . .” That was 
Anne, hurt at her brusquerie. Barbara took her eyes away 
and went to the end, to Anne, tender and understanding. 
“ I want you to be happy, dear. Come home this week-end 
and we’ll talk this over. We can find some way out for 
you.” 

She tore the sheet into fine strips and scattered them out 
of the window. She had no need, she thought, to reread 
it even once. She was in debt . . . debt that pressed, 

that could not be put off. What, for instance, was she to 
say to Mrs. Wilson? Figures ran through her mind, single 
items, totals, sums in addition, mingled with a bitter re¬ 
sentment. It wasn’t fair. Why should Myrrh have so 
much and she so little? Miriam never pretended to man- 


FRANKLIN 93 

age on her allowance . . . and Ruddy threw money 

away like water. She had only eighty a month, anyway 
. . . not enough. Eighty. The amount struck her. It 
was more than her income at least. It meant that Anne 
had given to her out of her own pocket. And Anne had 
bought her clothes beside and paid her tuition . . . flat 

sums. Anne had given and given. . . . 

She felt suddenly listless and depressed. When Ruddy 
and Mark Hale came up at the same moment, she could 
think of nothing to say. 

She sat between them on the wide sill, her arm crushed 
against Ruddy and listened to their voices talking across 
her, about the war. It was Hale, mainly, who talked. 
Ruddy had an unapproachable air as if he were deep in 
meditation and he answered Mark briefly or left him un¬ 
answered with an indifference that dismayed Barbara who 
wanted the surface of things always smooth. Once in the 
midst of a sentence, she felt Ruddy’s elbow nudging hers 
and looking up quickly, met his slanting gaze. Mark’s voice 
died in her ears and she sat, hardly breathing, looking at 
Ruddy’s face. An instant later she saw a red flush crawl 
up his cheeks and was aware that a silence had fallen, con¬ 
fusedly conscious of a hidden struggle between the two 
men, one of which they were each aware, one that con¬ 
cerned herself to a degree. 

She shook her head when Ruddy asked her to dance and 
sat on aloofly, with Hale beside her. He was admittedly out¬ 
side her compact with the Dauntless Three, since none of 
them felt that a man in facultate counted for much; and 
Barbara had seen as much of him as any person in Frank¬ 
lin. He was an instructor, a botanist already of some 
distinction. His brochures on drug plants had given him a 
place of which Barbara, with the rest of the students at 
Franklin, had no conception. She liked Mark Hale, simply 
. . . liked the brusque impersonality of his voice and 

the smile that lighted his thin brown face. Almost all 
women liked Mark. He was the sensitive type that comes 
nearest to understanding them. 


94 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ I haven’t seen you since the night of the play,” he said. 
“ You were . . . charming.” 

“ Thank you. I love a play. Seeing one ... or 
reading one. Or being in one.” 

“ Because you love make-believe ? Or because you love 
life?” 

Barbara pondered. “ I think it must be make-believe. 
I’m not at all sure that I do love life.” (Why did he start 
this sort of thing? Was he going to pull a bromide or two 
about striving upward and on? His eyes were friendly 
things.) 

“You’ll savor it,” Mark said. “Haven’t you? You’re 
so alive, every cell of you. And you must have been al¬ 
ways.” (Oh . . . well, if they were going to dissect 
her.) “I’ve thought about you as a little girl, living with 
Anne Linton . . . who had the sense, it appears, to 
leave you unshackled. It makes you different, Barbara, do 
you know it? You’ve had to make your own rules and you 
haven’t . . . many.” 

“ You think I’ve a simple code of ethics?” 

“Have you? Any code at all, I mean? I’ve thought 
about that. I’ve wondered about you as you are, now, try¬ 
ing things out, testing everything. You seem to me so 
. . . inquiring. As if you hadn’t reached conclusions 

of any sort. Yet I can’t imagine you as a woman without 
conclusions. You see I’ve thought about you as a woman, 
too, not cold yet delicately vigorous, not . . .” 

“ You seem to have thought about me a good deal.” 
(Idiot! Why should she say an inane thing like that, as if 
she were trying to be flirtatious? It was like something 
crashing grotesquely across his meaning.) She felt herself 
flushing and set her teeth. 

Mark laughed a little. “I have . . . and I shall 

again. I’ve talked you over with Geoff. Do you mind? 
You see ... I envy you.” 

“Envy me? Why?” (She was not enviable, surely, 
deep in debt, her joyousness eaten through with these 
doubts of . . . everything, of Ruddy, of herself.) 


FRANKUN 95 

“ Perhaps because you are unshackled. Yet I suppose 
for the same reason I ought to pity you. You’ll suffer 
horribly when you make mistakes. And you’ll make so 
many.” 

“ No,” she objected involuntarily. “ Why should you say 
that? I’d hate making mistakes, Mark. I don’t want 
to.” 

“ But you see,” he explained. “ You aren’t timid enough 
to play safe, eternally. And it’s only those who daren’t 
venture who keep to the sheltered places. You’ll never do it. 
I’m not sure that playing safe isn’t the worst mistake of all. 
I’m always doing it myself.” 

He seemed, as always, a trifle beyond her, a trifle elusive. 
She had to stop and consider what he said and when she 
grasped it, he was speaking of something else and she had 
lost the connection. She went back a little, following the 
course of her own thoughts and she had the impulse to tell 
him about Ruddy and of all that had happened; but one 
of the few certainties that she possessed was the fact that 
whatever was of intimate concern to her would not bear 
telling. She had to grope her way by herself. 

When she did not speak a little silence held them. 
Barbara felt Mark’s gaze on her face but when she tried 
to meet it, it seemed to go beyond her in contemplation of 
some inner image. 

“ You’ve had a bad time, somehow,” he said with a quiet 
gentleness. “ What is it ? Can you tell me ? ” 

His tone was too much for her. Tears stung her eye¬ 
lids and she turned her head sharply toward the street. 

“If you would tell me,” Mark persisted, “I’d take it as 
a kindness.” 

“ There’s nothing you can do. Not a thing.” The worst 
of her misery was summed up in the queer sickening pain 
she knew when she thought of Ruddy, in faint doubts. 
Mark couldn’t explain those inexplicable absences. . . . 

It was not a thing to be put into words and her own help¬ 
less tears filled her with an enraged surprise. Boob. 
Hysterical idiot. 


96 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


“ But you’re crying, you know, right now.” 

She brushed the back of her hand across her eyes im¬ 
patiently. “ Yes. It’s silly. I’m frightfully in debt.” (As 
good an excuse as any other ... a rather astounding 
excuse.) 

“ Debt?” 

“ I owe everybody . . . Mrs. Wilson, Miriam Payne, 

everybody.” Her voice was firmer. Debt was a concrete 
problem, one that could be put down in figures, added up, 
dealt with. It was like a toothache which at any time can 
divert one’s attention from a heartache. “ The worst of it 
is that I can’t see just how it happened. It wasn’t any one 
thing . . . little things, piling up.” 

“ A hundred? ” Mark hazarded. 

“ Puh.” A sound that might or might not have been 
laughter. “ Nearer three . . . more than three. I 

hate going home.” 

“ There are probably others here in this room who are 
hating to go home.” 

“ That doesn’t help me.” 

“ No,” he said slowly. “ But I’d like to help you if you’d 
let me. I’m years older than you and I know the last bitter¬ 
ness of owing money. Let me help you as I’d help . . . 

Geoff. You can pay me back sometime.” 

“ You know that’s impossible.” 

“ Why ? The money’s lying idle in the bank. It is the 
very simple matter of writing one check.” He stood up as 
the music stopped, shielding her while she mopped her eyes. 
“ Look here, Barbara. You’re tired now and the thing’s 
upset you. There’s nothing to worry about. Think it over. 
You needn’t decide for a day or two.” 

“ But I’m going down to Anne for the week-end.” 

From Ruddy’s arms she looked back at him, shaking her 
head persistently in refusal. She meant it as a refusal. 
Whatever debt was to mean to her, she felt that she could 
not take Mark at his kindly word. 

“ Babs,” said Ruddy in her ear, “got something to tell 
you. I’m . . . going.” 


FRANKLIN 97 

She drew a quick breath. She had known he would go. 
She had expected him to go but not now, not for a year 
. . . nor so exultingly. She looked at him with the 

feeling that she had never seen him vividly before . . . 

the red-gold crest of hair above his forehead, the brown 
freckles sprinkled across his nose, the bold blue of his eyes. 
An old familiar hammering began at her wrists. 

“ You’re the first person I’ve told. Officers Training 
Camp . . . Fort Sheridan . . . just got the word 
this morning. Corking, isn’t it ? ” 

“ Corking,” she said faintly. 

“ Babs . . . you look like you’d been crying. . . .” 

“ Ruddy, if ... if you’re going away ... I 
mean before you go . . 

“ We’re goin’ to have a whole rippin’ holiday to our¬ 
selves before I go. I’ve been plannin’ all mornin’. I’ve 
thought about nothing else. To-morrow, we’ll take the 
snuggly boat and beat it out of here—early. We’ll have 
a . . .” 

“ Ruddy, listen. There’s something I want to say.” She 
craved his assurances, she knew, as a famished man craves 
food, but she wanted to be sure. Already that young 
pledge of theirs was two years in the past. She had been 
coming to this for a long time. “If you’re . . . going, 

wouldn’t it be better to break off? ” 

“ What’s the big idea?” 

“ It was that date last Sunday. It set me thinking, sort 
of. It’s . . . it’s happened pretty often lately.” 

“Look here, Babs. I told you over the ’phone, didn’t I? 
Previous engagement. . . .” 

“ Yes, you said that. That doesn’t matter.” 

“ What do you mean ... * doesn’t matter ’ ? Men 

can’t always do as they like.” 

“ Other things being equal they generally do,” she heard 
her own voice saying evenly. “ But that isn’t the point, 
Ruddy. The point is . . .” 

“ I thought you trusted me.” 

" The point is that breaking off would mean freedom. 


98 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

You’d be free. You wouldn’t feel that you had to explain 
what you did. If we smashed . . .” 

“ Have it your own way.” 

“ No need your getting crabby, Ruddy. I’m trying to 
play fair. You’d be free. It would be easier. Every¬ 
thing.” 

“ For you, you mean.” 

“ Yes. Though that hadn’t occurred to me.” She wanted 
freedom . . . freedom from these stabs of doubt and 

pain. “ It would be easier. It’s never been an engagement, 
you know, just an understanding. I don’t quite know how 
much an understanding means. Yes, it would be easier 
for me.” 

“ D’you mean that ? ” His eyes were angry. Odd, that 
they were dancing perfectly without a break in the loping 
rhythm. “ D’you mean you’re ditching me now, after these 
two years, when . . . when I’m going away. My God, 

Babs. I don’t know what’s got into you. Do as you please 
though. Have it your own way.” 

“ You’d be . . . free, Ruddy.” 

“ Have it your own way.” 

He did not look at her. They stood dourly through a 
pause, applauding with the others; and when the girl at 
the piano began again, they went on dancing silently. But 
presently, she felt his arm tightening, holding her closer, his 
fingers locking with hers. She saw that his mouth had 
lost its sulkiness and was tilted at the corner, that his eyes 
were slanting down at her full of laughter. His whisper in 
her ear stirred her emotions like wind in tall grass. 

“ DarluT goose. Think I’ll ever let you go? You can’t 
lose me ... no use your tryink Old sweetheart.” 

“ Don’t, Ruddy.” 

“ But I mean it.” She felt slim and helpless in his big 
arms. The trembling of his body sent heat through her 
veins like little arrows of fire. “ Always be a Spitfire. Just 
your never liftin’ a finger to beckon. . . .” 

She was silent. 

“Breakin’ with me rather than lift a finger, Spitfire?” 


FRANKLIN 


“ Yes.” 

“ Will you go to-morrow ? All day drive ? ” 

“ Yes. ,, 

“You're mine . . . my girl for good. Going to 

marry me some day, old Babs.” 

“ Yes.” 

Joy flooded through her in a warm tide. She wondered 
that she had ever doubted him, ever magnified trifles light 
as air into proofs as strong as Holy Writ^ ever dreamed of 
pain. Her very heart was singing. 


VI 


THE HIGH ROAD 

I 

It was very fresh, rather cold on the high road. Above 
the fields drifted thin wisps of mist like floating veils blown 
by the wind. The sky was blue, streaked with hazy clouds 
and through the spring woods there was a tracery of misty 
tones, delicate green and red and pink, tender as the colors 
of early dawn. In the open spaces where the wind moved 
free, the perfume of May came to the senses, the odor of 
orchards in bud, the scent of earth in the plowed fields. 

Ruddy sat in his long racer as if he were part of it. He 
had as reckless a way of driving as he had of looking and 
speaking. Barbara said very little. She relaxed to the 
lazy slope of the seat, watching Ruddy’s gray-gloved hands 
on the wheel and her thoughts wandered, high and vagrant 
as the clouds in the spring sky. She was remembering a 
Polonaise that she had been trying the evening before, its 
chords mingling confusedly in her memory with the words 
of a poem she had read somewhere. She would have liked 
to talk of that idle happiness, of the poem and the meaning 
of the music and the beauty of the day outdoors, but it 
would have bored Ruddy. With Ruddy she learned to 
smile a little at her romantic extravagances. There was so 
much one couldn’t say. 

They drove, slowly at first, but steadily covering dis¬ 
tance. They mounted a long rise, looking down on a 
valley between two lines of low hills, plunged through it, 
came out on the other side to find a checker-board of pale 
fields. They went through villages where a pointed church 
rose above low, uneven roofs, where everything was swarm¬ 
ing with the movement of spring, houses done up, fences 


THE HIGH ROAD 


101 


newly painted, children playing marbles at the road-corners. 
In one place a mother stood like a clucking hen among her 
youngsters with a loaf of bread resting before her on a 
gate-post, cutting off thick slices which the children snatched 
away; in another a group of boys hung over the edge of a 
shallow brook. They shouted after the low-slung car and 
the two in it and when they had passed, Barbara looked 
back and saw them doubled with laughter. 

“ I think they’re laughing at us, Ruddy. They think 
we’re funny. What do you suppose they’re thinking ? ” 

“ I love you,” he said as if the words were so close to 
his lips that they would have answered any question she 
had put. He drove faster, holding his eyes to the road 
ahead. The sun was high in the sky and the clear light 
fell everywhere with a delicate sharp radiance. Barbara 
felt a quiet happiness, a sense of peace. After all, the two 
years since he had first told her that had gone swiftly. He 
loved her. Some day she would marry him ... in 
two years, three years. 

“ You’re going to marry me to-day, Babs. That’s my 
big idea. I’ve brought you off to marry you.” 

“ Clever of you.” 

“ No fooling. I mean it. Listen. We're headed for a 
place called Mayfield where my dad’s a shack for fishing. 
Place of an old German farmer named Reinhardt. I wired 
him last night so he’ll be expecting us. We’ll be mighty 
comfortable up there . . . fifty miles from anywhere. 

Listen. We’ll have lunch at the county-seat, maybe twenty- 
five miles from here, and look up a minister this afternoon. 
It’s as easy as turning your hand, marrying is. I’m twenty- 
three, nearly, and I’m . . . going away.” 

“ I know.” 

“ There’s a reason if you have to have a reason . . . 

a war-marriage. Why shouldn’t we ? * Everybody’s doin’ 
it. . . .’” He swerved the car sharply to the side of 
the road and took her to him. In his arms she had sense 
of her power to stir him; and for an instant caught at the 
moment of flood-tide 2 they were carried up together. “ You 


102 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

do love me,” Ruddy whispered, very low. “ You know you 
do.” 

“ I’m mad about you,” Barbara said. 

“ Never been anybody else?” 

“ Why, how could there be, Ruddy ? You were the first 
. . . nobody ever kissed me but you.” 

“ Honestly, Babs ? ” He drew back and looked at her 
steadily in something like surprise. Then he buried his face 
in her shoulder and she felt his kisses on her throat. 
“ Honey, I’m going to be good to you. Oh, I am going to 
be good to you.” 

“ You’re always good to me,” Barbara said diffidently. 
“ I love being with you.” 

“ You’ll love being married to me, Babs.” The hot blood 
went up her face and he laughed. “ Darlin’ Goose ” he 
said unsteadily. 

“What . . . what would people say?” 

“ What d’you care what they say ? ” 

“ I don’t. Only about yours. Do you think your people 
will like me ? ” 

“ Couldn’t help it. Do you want them to like you ? ” 

“ Of course. I want everybody to like me. I love being 
. . . liked. It’s the breath of life to me. And your 

people . . . I’ve never seen your mother, Ruddy, and 

your father only once.” 

He laughed at her frankly. “ But they won’t know. 
They don’t count in this. We’ll keep it to ourselves. After¬ 
ward . . . after the war’s over, they may kick up a 

shindy, but when the break’s over, they’ll be glad. They’ll 
be crazy about you. I’ve bothered them a lot.” 

“ Yes, I know.” 

He veered sharply toward her and looked at her search- 
ingly, his smile drawing his lips into hard strained lines. 
“ What d’you mean . . . know ? ” 

“ I think we all bother older people always. They don’t 
understand.” 

“ Oh . . . that. Yes, I’ll say we do.” He leaned 

forward and started the car again. “ It will be quite some 


THE HIGH ROAD 


103 


time, however, before we bother them with this. The 
speedster makes it a cinch. You’ll have to learn to drive 
it, Babs. I’m up at the Fort, see? I get leave . . . 
blow back to Chi . . . pick you up somewhere. . . . 
Good-night. Think what week-ends we’ll have. There’s no 
sense in our waiting. We can keep the thing quiet as long 
as we please. Trust you to put it over on the doctor. 
. . . What’s her name ? Linton ? ” 

Anne. Her name dashed against Barbara’s rising emo¬ 
tions like a cup of cold water. Anne had given and given. 
She sat very still and in the lengthening silence she looked 
about her ... at the hard brown road slipping be¬ 
neath them, at the great blue doming sky, at a dogwood 
holding its silver trays of blossoms at the edge of the road, 
at the shadows of trees, fantastic sable figures on the grass, 
at anything but Ruddy’s flushed triumphant face. 

“ Anne would hate ... a secret marriage,” she 
said. 

He laughed, throwing back his head. “ There’s a lot of 
things she’d hate, come to that. Anne hates me” 

“ Ruddy ... I can’t do it.” 

“ Rot,” he said. “What’s the big idea? You can’t not 
do it now after you’ve admitted you cared. We’re safe, I 
tell you. Nobody’s going to know.” 

“ It isn’t that.” 

“ ‘ Everybody’s doin’ it.’ People can’t talk about you.” 

“ Oh, Ruddy. It isn’t that.” 

“What is it? You haven’t stopped lovin’ me all in a 
second, have you ? ” 

“ I’ll never stop loving you, Ruddy.” 

His eyes encompassed her sending his gaze about her 
like a warm cloak. “No. Two years mean something. 
We’ve got the right to marry if we want to, after two 
years.” 

“ Not this way.” 

“You’re not hanging out for a big wedding, Babs? 
Bridesmaids . . . frocks . . • that truck ? ” 

“ No. Heavens, no. Don’t be silly.” Her hands came 


104 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

together and she cried out, “ Ruddy, it’s . . . it's 

Anne.” 

“ Anne ?” Sheer incredulity filled his voice. “ Anne ? ” 

“ You see, it isn’t fair to Anne. She’s expecting me home 
this week-end. She’s working so frightfully hard. 
She . . ” 

“ My God. If you’d said anything else. Anne. She isn’t 
even a relation, is she ? ” 

“ She brought me up . . . all these years.” 

“ Does Anne mean more to you than I do ? I can’t make 
you out, Babs.” 

“ I can’t make myself out . . . quite,” Barbara said 

shakily. “ I can’t marry you . . . and it seems queer 

because I do love you more than anyone. I’ve dreamed of 
marrying you. If Anne weren’t . . . Anne, I could do 
it without a qualm. But I can’t . . . not this way.” 

For answer he pulled her up to him fiercely into arms 
that allowed no refusal. The familiar spell held her fast. 
She yielded herself to the moment, thoughts whirling 
through her mind like insects, gave herself to his kisses as 
to some force stronger than herself. But there was no in¬ 
ward joy. All her ecstasy was of the body not the spirit. 
None at all of the spirit. 

“We’d be . . . happy, Babs.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ That’s all that matters, isn’t it ? ” 

She was silent. They slid through a tiny village. Be¬ 
yond it, between the empty fields, Ruddy spoke again in a 
crisp, hard voice. “ Plenty women in the world, you know. 
I could find someone, I reckon, who’d make it up to me. 
Would you care ? ” 

“ Why should I care ? ” She said it coolly . . . that 
Barbara whose pulses pounded when he came close. Ruddy 
looked at her, a look she had never seen before, a look of 
understanding, pressing on her secret pain. 

“ But you do,” he said. “ You love me. You’re as crazy 
to get married as I am.” 

She told herself that that was true. If it were not for 


THE HIGH ROAD 


105 


Anne, she would have married him. If she could have done 
so, she would have surrendered her will to his even now, 
taking whatever consequences followed their rashness, but 
her will refused. She could not analyze the resisting 
strength within her. She found no blemish in Ruddy’s rea¬ 
soning but, in spite of reason, her will held against his in 
a denial like granite. The thing was settled by no coherent 
effort of her brain but by something instinctive, some deli¬ 
cate unconscious pride that those years with Anne had 
given her. “ What am I? ” she asked herself. “ What am 
I ? Why am I doing this ? ” 

She was sorry for Ruddy. Her eyes looked at him re¬ 
morsefully with a curiously maternal tenderness. She knew 
that she was going to hold against him and against herself. 
Against anger . . . (Ruddy was angry, his face flushed 

brick-red, his mouth set in a hard, white line) . . . 

against that strange pulsing desire . . . against the 

very tenderness for him that was in her heart. She had 
never loved him quite so much. 

“ But it’s no use, Ruddy. I can’t marry you.” 

“If you would just give me one good reason.” 

“ I’ve told you. It’s Anne.” 

Things deadlocked there. They lunched at the hotel to 
which Ruddy had wired but they ate nothing. By half¬ 
past one, they were on their way home. They drove faster 
than they had traveled in the morning. A storm was coming 
up, drifting above the horizon the edge of a gray cloud 
feathery and vague, melting into the blue sky, and Barbara 
felt an excited response to that expectation stirring the 
air. Once she tried to talk but Ruddy cut her short. 

" You’ve been beastly to me,” he said. “ You women. 
. . . You make me sick. . . .” 

Their silence became a living, tangible thing. Through 
many miles she sat beside him, stealing a look now and then 
at his sullen face. How like a sulky little boy he seemed 
and even in his sulkiness how close and dear. . . . 

But when he left her at Mrs. Wilson’s and, backing the 
car to the corner, swung toward the city without a word 


106 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

or glance, her poise deserted her suddenly. For the first 
time in her life she was confronted by an act of her own 
for which she could find no adequate explanation and the 
fact dismayed her. Why had she let him go? Had she 
mistaken pride, an exalted perversity for strength? She 
had been proud of being able to hold against him and re¬ 
fuse the marriage Ruddy wanted, setting an imaginary 
principle above their love. Now that he had left her she 
wanted to run away from her thoughts. She had an over¬ 
whelming longing for St. Agatha’s, for the quiet dormer 
above the trees, for Anne. She flew up-stairs, flung her 
things into a bag, raced for the train. 


II 

In the late afternoon, there were few passengers and she 
took a seat by an open window where the wet wind could 
beat against her face. Across the aisle she saw a man 
smile at her and she stopped short, trying to remember 
where she had seen him and what it was that gave him a 
vague familiarity. He wore the inevitable khaki. His 
features were big and sharply cut and his eyes, long-lashed, 
dark-gray, held a curious ardent flame. Something in the 
way his hair grew at the nape of his neck, in the healthy 
hardness of his flesh held her eyes; but in the end she 
decided that she had never seen him, that he was merely 
one of those men who occasionally attracted her not so 
much by appearance as by a dynamic vigor that stimulated 
in her a haunting curiosity. 

A sweep of rain brushed her cheek. Far ahead, she 
could see mist driving across the fields and in the open 
spaces the sky showed mottled green and saffron filled with 
the smoke of racing clouds. Trees bent to the lash of the 
wind. Suddenly, lightning flared and there was a clap 
of thunder, a redoubling, crackling roll. Windows slammed 
shut through the car. When the rain began to drive in 
upon her, Barbara closed her own and sat leaning against 
it, alternately looking up at the sky and glancing at the 


THE HIGH ROAD 


107 


man across the aisle behind drooping lashes. She saw a 
quiver of amusement cross his face and smiled at him, 
secretly, making a barely perceptible gesture with the hand 
that lay, palm upward on the seat. (Easier to talk to any¬ 
one than sit there remembering Ruddy.) 

“ So you hadn’t forgotten,” he said. 

Now, except for his swift smile, he was exactly like a 
hundred thousand other pleasant young men, who were 
wearing olive-drab that spring. Absurdly alive, to be sure 
. . . but forgotten? 

“ Forgotten what ? ” 

“ Me. You haven’t, have you? I must have made some 
impression.” 

“ I’ve met you before somewhere, I know.” It was their 
game, was it ? . . . this do-you-remember prologue. 

Played for the benefit of a fat woman in a jade-green hat 
behind them. Barbara fancied she did it cleverly. “ I’m 
frightfully stupid.” 

“Have you forgotten, honestly? You . . .” The 
slight gesture of his hand imitated her invitation. “ Or 
didn’t you? I thought you did.” 

“ You looked so very nice.” 

His face went blank for an instant before he smiled. 
“ I am nice,” he said evenly. “ Perfect health, perfect 
eyesight, perfect teeth, perfect age of twenty-five. I have 
nice tastes . . . for porterhouse steak for instance and 

head lettuce, for movies and Episcopalian hymns and 
Colonial houses and soft collars . . .” 

“Football?” 

“ Yes, and track. But I’d rather fish than anything. 
I’ve been fishing to-day in a place I know up beyond Frank¬ 
lin. There’s a good twelve pound in my creel and they 
fought me like so many devils. Can you skin a bull-head ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ I could teach you. I’ll take you fishing with me some¬ 
time and teach you. You’re the first girl I ever said that to 
in my life. Queer, eh? ” 

“ I know I should hate fishing,” she said coolly. “ So 


103 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

don’t plan on it. I can’t imagine anything duller than wait¬ 
ing to catch a fish ... or watching you catch one. ,, 

“ Hates. Well ... I have hates, too . . . un¬ 
derdone pork for one and the smell of joss-sticks and red 
smeared on a fat woman’s mouth. Loves and hates . . . 
there you have me.” 

“ All but your name.” 

“ Is it necessary for me to mention that ? ” 

Barbara’s lip curled in a tiny smile. “ Not if I look like 
that to you.” 

“ You look infernally fetching to me.” His glance wan¬ 
dered deliberately over her frock of rough brown silk, her 
brown pumps, her hat with its trace of burnt orange under 
the brim. “ You look exactly like the sort of pretty person 
I’ve been taking the other side of the road from most of 
my life. It may be impolite to mention it. . . .” 

“ Is that part of your regular line ? ” 

“ No,” he admitted. “ My regular line begins ‘ I’m going 
to kiss you on the mouth.’ How do you like it ? ” 

She drew back. (It served her right, of course. The 
beast.) “ I think I shall introduce myself,” she said coldly. 
“ I am Miss Fallows.” 

“Barbara Fallows. I have the advantage, you see. I’m 
Geoffrey Hale.” 

“ Oh, my word.” Barbara’s hands came together tightly. 
“ Geoffrey Hale. Of course. What must you think of 
me?” 

“ Do you care what I think ? ” 

She intrenched herself behind a faint smile. “ Not at 
all. It was the storm . . . I . . .” 

“ You weren’t in the least afraid of the storm. Don’t try 
that.” 

She achieved a cool amusement that matched his. “ It 
would have been an awfully good play to put over, wouldn’t 
it? No, I wasn’t afraid. I wanted someone to amuse me. 
Can you, do you think ? ” 

She leaned her head against the window where there was 
a pleasant drum of rain and appraised him as he talked. 


THE HIGH ROAD 


109 


There was a directness about him like a clean, fresh wind. 
He had a beautiful mouth, she decided . . . straight 

and wide and sensitive and with a trick of keeping firmly 
closed at the corners while he talked, that fascinated her. 
He talked in a swift, headlong fashion, using phrases that 
penetrated her confused depression. Presently, she began 
to listen. But she listened with a touch of antagonism, the 
quite feminine antagonism against a man whom a woman 
suspects is stronger than she. She wanted to score against 
him for the blank astonishment that had flickered over his 
face when he realized that she had picked him up as a 
chance unknown who looked “ very nice/’ and for the evi¬ 
dent fact that he talked more from sheer vigor, because his 
mind exercised itself that way than from any wish to please 
her. She liked him better than most casual acquaintances 
and nearly as well as Mark who was like and yet so un¬ 
like him. “ He can’t help talking war,” she thought. 
“ He’s fretting to get away. Ruddy will be like 
that. . . ” 

As they came into the city, the car filled and Geoffrey 
got up and stood in the aisle. It was something of a relief. 
Barbara rested her chin on her hand, staring out at the 
long gray smoky streets that swung obliquely past her. 
Her eyes were unobservant and the squares streamed by 
like an obscure phantasmagoria . . . neighborhoods 

merged, small ugly houses ... a gracious square of 
green . . . the towers of a distant cathedral . . . 
smoke-stained factory facades ... a grain elevator 
thrusting itself from the ground in the midst of a tangle of 
tracks ... the river, pale and muddy ... the 
hulk of a mill floating above it in the gray slant of rain. 
Her thoughts drifted at length into a game of her child¬ 
hood, a curious irrelevant play of superstition. 

“ If that woman in the green hat laughs out loud again, 
I will believe that Ruddy loves me. There.—He does love 
me. Now, if the engine whistles before I count a hundred, I 
will believe that everything will be all right. Suppose this 
Geoffrey Hale asks to see me again. I’ll take it as an omen 


110 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

that Ruddy will ask to marry me again. . . .” She for¬ 

got Geoffrey so completely that, when she stood up to leave 
the car, it gave her a queer lurch of the heart to find him 
pushing behind her. 

“ You’ve no umbrella.” He had none either, but he stood 
above her, taking the worst of the rain that the wind was 
driving in gusts against them. “ Step into the vestibule, 
will you, till I can find you a taxi? If you’d remembered 
me, I should ask you to dinner.” 

“ Why don’t you, anyway ? ” The inevitable conversation 
with Anne about her debts loomed before her at St. 
Agatha’s. It was the omen. (“ If he does ask me, Ruddy 
will ask . . .”) “I should certainly accept.” 

“Will you really? There’s a restaurant somewhere near 
this corner. I hope you’re as hungry as I am.” 

Barbara admitted hunger. The restaurant was empty ex¬ 
cept for a few tables of theatrical folk obliged to dine early. 
In the mezzanine the orchestra was tuning its instruments 
and Geoffrey led her across the room to a table set beside 
a tiny fountain plashing into a pool where goldfish glim¬ 
mered. With the hot soup, her spirits lightened and she 
began to pretend that she was an older woman, very modern, 
grown-up and smart. Very poised with the resolution to 
ignore the small miseries that weighted her heart like lead. 

Ruddy. She would not think of Ruddy nor that wild 
drive. Ruddy, poor dear, would come back. She would 
not think of the debts she had no way of paying nor the 
certainty that the Piper was at hand to claim his due. She 
held herself to listening politely to Geoffrey’s voice coming 
across the table. He was talking Wells, now . . . 

something about Mr. Britling. 

The restaurant filled, slowly at first, but as they neared 
the end of their meal, people crowded at the tables 
and there was a press near the door. In the door itself a 
tall figure caught her eye and with a shock of recognition, 
Barbara saw that it was Ruddy. He was smiling, his glance 
slanting down at someone behind his shoulder ... a 
woman ... a girl, tall and supple-bodied with red lips 


THE HIGH ROAD ill 

that glowed and smiled. She had a black fur thrown across 
her shoulders and against it her slim throat gleamed white. 
They made their way along the wall to a curtained cubicle 
where there was a table for two. Ruddy took off the fur 
as they went into the recess and from her place half-way 
across the room, Barbara saw that his hand lingered a long 
time on the girl’s arm and that she was laughing up at him, 
her provocative face close to his. The next moment, he 
had drawn the curtain, shutting them away. 

She put down her fork aimlessly. A familiar sickening 
pain went through her and she clenched her hands together 
in her lap, fighting it back. Everything stood out with the 
supernatural clearness of a dream . . . the square ta¬ 

ble, the fluted napkins, the carafe, the plates banded in 
black and gold. She could still hear Hale’s voice but she 
could think of no reason for listening to what he said. 
She could find no reason for being there at all when she 
might have been a hundred and fifty miles away, alone with 
Ruddy . . . married. 

Married to Ruddy. That would have been reality. This 
was merely an illusion . . . this queer crowded place 

with the waves of harsh Russian music crashing against 
its walls, with the smell of food and the rattle of dishes 
and Ruddy shut away behind that curtain with a pretty 
girl. 

“ I could have driven down with him,” she thought 
stupidly. “All the way . . And as Geoffrey paid 

the check, she wavered to her feet. 

“ You’re white,” he said with a gentleness that was like 
Mark’s. “ It’s hot in here. Wait. I’ll get that 
taxi. . . .” 

She nodded and they pressed through the crowd waiting 
at the door, Geoffrey’s hand on her arm reminding her of 
his presence; but once they were in the taxi, she moved 
away and instantly, for a long interval, forgot him. 

“ I’m going to see you again,” he said. “ You’ve already 
kept me awake a night or two.” 

“ Sorry.” 


118 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“No use being sorry. You will again, likely. Tell me 
why you never answered my letter ? ” 

“ Letter ? ” 

“ I wrote you two years ago . . . alter I met you 
that day at Pinelands.” 

She shook her head. It was odd that she did not re¬ 
member for she had had few letters. “ I am sure I never 
got it.” 

“ I took care to put my address on it. It ought to have 
come back if it wasn’t delivered.” 

Suddenly she spoke of the day at Pinelands, and of the 
pageant, telling him feverishly of that summer, of her 
books, of Anne and her far-off childhood at St. Agatha’s, 
of Miriam and Mark . . . nothing at all of Ruddy. 

In the relief of talking she did not guess how frank she 
was. It was quite dark when they reached St. Agatha’s 
and Geoffrey halted in the shadow of the bridal wreath in 
bloom beside the wall. 

“ I’d like to see you again,” he said suddenly, “ and I 
sha’n’t see you again, soon, I’m afraid. I’ve a hunch this 
is my last leave. I’m going out home to-night with that 
idea.” 

“ Is it far ? ” She was stricken with the thought that she 
had kept him . . . from home. 

“ Forty miles. The station’s Wynville. I’m going to 
write you. Barbara, did you ever talk to ... to any¬ 
one . . . any other man . . . quite as you’ve 

talked to me this last hour ? ” 

The night, dark and scented, hid her frowning. “ No. 
. . . Did you? To any woman?” 

“ No. It’s queer, eh ? ” 

There was a lengthening silence. Then Geoffrey slipped 
an arm about her shoulders with a slight pressure. 

“ My last leave,” he said again. “ I . . . Before I 

go, I’m going to kiss you ... on the mouth.” 

“Your regular line?” The sight of the dark flame in 
his eyes produced in her this mood of mockery and caprice. 
She did not move away from the circle of his arm but 


THE HIGH ROAD 113 

stood still looking at him. Why not? Ruddy would kiss 
that other girl before the evening was done, had kissed her 
probably, while Barbara was in the same room, the moment 
the curtains were drawn. That was what those curtains 
were for. Ruddy didn’t care. With Ruddy, one didn’t 
even have the consolation of being something unique. . . . 

“ Not exactly my regular line,” Geoffrey explained de¬ 
liberately. “ I’ve a reason for kissing you. I’m just telling 
you beforehand because I want to know if you are going 
to fight.” 

“ Not at all ” Barbara said coolly. “ I’m expecting rather 
to like it.” 

But she did not. She hated it. No one but Ruddy had 
ever kissed her and in Ruddy’s kiss she had found conse¬ 
cration. There was something ruthless about Geoffrey 
Hale. It was not a kiss given in haste, not a rudely com¬ 
pelling kiss nor one that gave promise of rapture. But 
there was Geoffrey’s face as he freed her and drew back 
his head to look into her eyes ... a blinded sort of 
face as if he were blinking in a strong light. 

“ A kiss is nothing,” she flared at him. “ Lots of kisses 
in the world to-night ... all kinds. One means noth¬ 
ing at all.” 

“ This one means something,” he said very low as if his 
voice emptied out a full measure of disbelief in the won¬ 
dering words. “I'm afraid I shall remember it all the 
time I’m gone.” 

So she had scored against him. She smiled a little as 
she drew her hands away and moved past him up the steps; 
but by the time she had climbed to Anne’s domain in the 
third floor, the thought of him had faded and she felt only 
a leaden fatigue, a leaden longing to lie down and forget 
everything in sleep. 


Ill 

In the frame of the mirror above her bureau, Anne had 
stuck a special delivery letter addressed to her in Mark’s 


114: THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

square handwriting. There was a check inside from which 
her own name stared up at her and a written number, fol¬ 
lowed by a number in neat figures. . . * Four hundred 
dollars. “ I want you to take this and rejoice/’ he wrote. 
“ Don’t let a mere scruple force you to send it back. A 
man would take it. Why not you ? ” 

She put it under her pillow and undressed slowly. But 
an hour later, after a hot bath, she was twisting restlessly 
on her bed. She tried desperately not to think, not to re¬ 
member the incidents of that long day. She set her teeth, 
counting innumerable sheep and when that palled she re¬ 
peated poetry, lilting words through whose pattern there 
came constantly the memory of Ruddy in jagged flashes 
. . . the look of his gray-gloved hands on the wheel, his 

stormy voice and sullen mouth, the momentary peace that 
had touched her when he took her in his arms, his hand 
slipping lingeringly down the arm of the girl whose face 
was lifted to his. 

Her inward vision was lucid with comprehension. She 
could not pretend even to herself that she did not under¬ 
stand about Ruddy and this girl who had supplanted her. 
There was no use in pretending anything. The fire eating 
through her was bitter jealousy. Sickening . . . All 
her thoughts trailed out in pain. At times she was shaken 
with short racking sobs, but never for long; for long in¬ 
tervals she lay motionless, aware of the pain but powerless 
to combat it. When, very late, she heard Anne at the door, 
she drew a long breath or two, feigning sleep so that she 
need not speak. . . . 

The sun was shining when she opened her eyes. In the 
room outside Anne was moving about. The percolator was 
bubbling and there was a smell of toasting bread. Barbara 
came out tingling with the shock of her cold shower and 
rough toweling and kissed Anne. She took up a bowl of 
strawberries and sat down to watch the toaster while she 
hulled them. 

“ I knew you’d come last night,” Anne said. “ But they 
>vere bringing in a bad case . . . operative and un- 


THE HIGH ROAD 


115 

usual ... a man shot, with the bullet lodging in the 
spine and I didn’t . . .” 

“ Anne,” Barbara said abruptly, “ I almost got married 
yesterday. Ruddy Gannet took me for a long drive. He 

wanted me to marry him-” She stopped, marveling 

at Anne’s tremulous pale face. 

“ You . . . didn’t.” 

“I wish to God I had,” she blurted with a fierce little 
clenching of her hands. “ It’s this being stretched on a 
rack all the time. I could have married him . . . mar¬ 

ried him, yesterday and some damned scruple held me back. 
Don’t look like that, Anne. I didn’t mean to swear.” 

“ You’re too young for this,” Anne said quietly. Her 
face took on a blank composure but her hands shook as 
they lifted the percolator. Coffee slopped on the fresh 
cloth. “ You’re too young.” 

“ Lots of women marry at eighteen.” 

“ That wasn’t what I meant. Are you engaged to him ? ” 

“ I . . . don’t know.” 

“ Barbara.” 

“ I’m not . . . formally engaged to him, Anne. I’ve 

never worn a ring. But . . . No, really, I’m under no 

obligations to him nor he to me.” 

“ Then why do you . . .” 

“ It’s just that I can’t think of him as belonging to anyone 
else.” 

Anne scowled at a slice of buttered toast. “ Rather odd, 
it seems to me, that this should have happened. His bob¬ 
bing up again.” 

“ Again?” 

Then she remembered that Anne did not know. Anne 
had shared nothing of these last two years with Ruddy, 
had never caught so much as a glimpse of that glowing 
inner world where Barbara had lived. Her realities were 
not realities to Anne. She was outside . . . and dif¬ 
ferent. Could one imagine an Anne in love at eighteen? 
She’d never have looked up from her books. 

“ It seems to me that if he cared for you in the right way,” 


116 THE ELAME OF HAPPINESS 

Anne was saying, “he wouldn’t have been in such mad 
haste. A secret marriage, Barbara. . . . Surely, if his 

intentions were serious and honorable . . 

“ Oh, Anne, don’t. There’s no use-” 

There simply was no use in talking to anyone to whom 
problems presented themselves with such stark simplicity. 
Yet, if she could have talked with anyone, it should have 
been Anne. She agonized in her reticence, but she found 
no explanation for what had happened. “ If I told her 
about Ruddy . . . and last night . . . she’d think 

we were beastly, both of us. No use . . and aloud 
she said, “ Have the papers come ? I’m not going to 
church.” 

“ Neither am I. They’re in the hall, I think. We’ll talk 
later. I’ve more than five women can do this morning.” 

While Anne dressed, Barbara settled herself in the south 
dormer, scanning headlines. Outside the trees hardly 
stirred against the blue spring sky. The stillness, the fa¬ 
miliar comfort of the wide cushioned seat, soothed her. 
At the top of the theatrical section, she found a cluster of 
photographs. 

“ John Garsh presents . . .” she read aloud and added 

involuntarily, “ Why . . . it’s that man.” 

“What man?” Anne asked from the doorway, but 
Barbara’s startled eyes had passed the headline and come 
to a full stop upon the face of a girl beneath it. Jane 
Treves was the girl’s name . . . Jane Treves . . . 

the girl who had been with Ruddy in the restaurant the 
night before. 

“ You didn’t answer my question,” Anne said impatiently. 
“ What man?” 

Barbara shook her head. Like pieces in a picture puzzle 
thoughts fitted together in her mind . . . John Garsh, 

standing in the wings of the drab theater at Franklin the 
night of the college play . . . the slender figure of a 

woman waiting at the end of the dim hall . . . Ruddy’s 

previous engagement that Sunday afternoon ... his 
tenderness (hiding an uncomfortable remorse, perhaps) 


THE HIGH ROAD 


117 


... his insistence on their marriage and his sulky 
threat, and fitting with these, the debts that frightened her, 
Mark’s check, Jane Treves’ red mouth smiling at Ruddy 
. . . parts of one whole, after all. She wanted to know 

this Jane Treves, to search her through and through and 
find her charm. 

Before Anne came back for dinner, her mind was made 
up. But she felt that she must move carefully, letting 
escape no hint of the part Ruddy was playing in her de¬ 
cision. 

“ I’m going to work this summer, Anne-dear,” she began 
cheerfully. “ You see . . . I wanted to talk to you 
about this . . . after the play the other night a man 
called John Garsh came to me and offered me a part in a 
Little Theater they’re starting here. It’s all there in the 
paper. ‘John Garsh presents . . .’ He liked what I 

did and he . . 

“ That’s impossible,” Anne interrupted harshly. “ You 
couldn’t do that, Barbara.” 

“ Why couldn’t I ? ” It was not impossible, she told her¬ 
self fiercely. It had come like a little gift from the high 
gods, that offer, a bit of sheer luck. “ I can find out for 
myself about Jane Treves. I must. I must,” and aloud 
she said, “ It looks very possible to me. He’s offered 
me twenty a week and I could hardly earn that at 
anything else. It gives me a chance to pay what I 
owe. . . .” 

“ How much do you owe ? ” 

“A good deal. But I’ve arranged about that . . . 

and this is my chance, can’t you see? My chance to pay it 
back. I think I’d like it, Anne, really.” 

Doctor Linton’s fingers moved on the arm of her chair 
and Barbara took her eyes from Anne’s composed face and 
watched them. They expressed at first, only distaste, lift¬ 
ing a little, palm outward, as if they were pushing away an 
unpalatable dish; but as the idea grew in her mind, they 
became still, and after a moment, one of them clenched 
and struck softly on the chair. The forefinger pointed, 


118 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

tapping thoughtfully, counting off reasons protestingly. 
There was a long pause after the last slow tap. Then, 
both hands relaxed and dropped, resignedly, into Anne’s 
lap. 

“ My reasons are mostly prejudices, I know/’ she said 
slowly . . . and uselessly, so far as Barbara was con¬ 

cerned, “ the prejudices current in my day. I don’t like it, 
frankly. I don’t like the world you’ll live in . . . nor 
some of the people you may meet. As I see it, you’re 
dipping into a by-path away from the straight road I’d 
hoped you’d follow. Women are always doing that. They 
start out on the highway with a fine plan to get some¬ 
where and then zigzag off into crossroads that end, as 
anyone might expect they would, in a pasture or a tangle 
of briars.” 

And were men, Barbara asked herself, behind the zig¬ 
zagging of other women as Ruddy was behind hers . . . 

behind the books she read, the very subjects she studied 
at Franklin, the smallest acts? Probably they were. She 
could hardly be unique, in a world full of women. But 
it made feminine choices rather fortuitous if it were 
true. 

“ I have no right,” Anne said, “ to hold you back with 
my prejudices. I’ve been rebellious all my life against the 
conventions that define what a woman shall or shall 
not do. A woman’s work is whatever she is fitted to do. 
You’re growing up, chick, in spite of me and while I can’t 
get used to it, I’ve no idea of keeping you swathed in 
cotton-wool. This is the sort of thing your generation is 
doing. Perhaps your work is there ... in the 
theater.” 

Poor Anne, trying gallantly to understand the new gene¬ 
ration. “ Darling, don’t be so solemn. It’s just for the 
summer.” 

“ I’m not so sure. Every decision, even the smallest, 
carries consequences; but it’s you, of course, who will have 
to take the consequences. You must decide this for your¬ 
self. After all a job gives a woman one thing that is 


THE HIGH ROAD 119 

exceedingly good for her . . . absorbing occupation. 
It keeps her mind off herself. . . 

“ But she’s thinking of Ruddy,” Barbara thought. 

“ . . and the experience will be valuable somehow,” 

Anne went on cheerfully. “ All experience is valuable. 
You have to try things out if you’re ever to understand 
yourself and you have to understand yourself if you are 
to find any meaning to life. You find the idea over and 
over in the nineteenth-century writers . . . Goethe, 

Shelley. * The world of experience is the world of facts.’ ” 
Anne’s Credo. She depended, always, on her philoso¬ 
phers, quoted from them. She had a certain tenderness for 
Spinoza, hated Nietzsche even while he awed her, laughed 
behind her hand at Schopenhauer. . . . 

There was one thing that might have made a difference. 
Late in the afternoon, Barbara telephoned to Ruddy. But 
he wasn’t in town, a woman’s petulant voice told her. No, 
he had not come home at all. He had telephoned Friday 
night that he was spending his week-end with a college 
friend somewhere in Wisconsin. 


VII 


JANE TREVES 

I 

The man at the box-office led her through the lobby into 
the darkened theater, cool after the heat and glare of the 
street. The curtain was down, leaving the maw of the 
auditorium a pit of darkness but behind its blank wall there 
was the sound of footsteps crossing over bare boards and a 
thumping of chairs. Barbara followed down a narrow 
aisle, through a box and an obscure door into the bare 
space behind the dropped curtain. Against its unpainted 
patched back there was a kitchen table, flanked by wooden 
chairs under a flaring drop-light. The table was covered 
with papers and a man was fingering through them. . . . 
“ Garsh,” her guide said and left her. 

Barbara moved slowly forward until she stood beside the 
table. Garsh did not rise. He seemed to be considering 
her, a pudgy forefinger laid against his nose, his eyes grave. 
Kindliness lurked about the thick lips ringed with fat. 

“ I am Barbara Fallows,” she said haltingly. “ You may 
not remember.” 

“ I remember. Ingenues I told you I could maybe make 
of you . . . and I pay you very liddle. It is not for 

acting I hire you. It is advertisement . . . classy 
amateur. Young girl . . . you should look. Off-stage, 
you dress the part. . . .” 

Through an inexplicable pause, Barbara gathered that 
her clothes displeased him. She became conscious of the 
rouge on her lips and the broad hat that, pulled close over 
her eyes, gave her a sophisticated look. She had borrowed 
the hat from a new Probationer and taken Anne's furs. 
(“If I can't have sables—give me marten,” Anne said.) 
Altogether she had fancied she looked remarkably well. 


JANE TREVES 121 

The man's criticism seemed absurd as well as slightly with¬ 
ering. 

“ It is because I advertise you,” he explained not un¬ 
kindly. “ I shall have you photographed in white. Yes. 
And a flopping hat. Remind me for the order . . .” 

That was, simply, all of it. Garsh turned away toward 
a group of people, speaking to each of them with a smile 
and a hearty handshake. Then he beckoned Barbara and 
spoke a half-dozen names rapidly, from which she gathered 
fleeting impressions . . . Watson . . . stage man¬ 

ager in mauve shirt-sleeves, slowly masticating tobacco 
. . . a leading man, dark-haired and dark-eyed . . . 
St. John-Bridges ... an old man with a face dryly 
pink like a woman’s from years of make-up . . . 
Nancy Danyers, the New York actress whom Garsh had 
chosen for leads . . . young with a thin, hard, hand¬ 
some face . . . Fania Somebody . . . and, across 
a little chasm of silence, the girl who had dined with Ruddy 
Saturday night. “ Miss Treves,” Garsh said, “ this is my 
ingenue . . . Miss Fallows.” 

Jane Treves had a slim expressiveness of body that in¬ 
vested the commonest movement with beauty. She could 
cross a room and leave one breathless. Her eyes were pale 
blue with a sweet, sly expression that allured mysteriously. 
Except for that grace of line and her eyes, she was only a 
rather pretty girl with heavy honey-colored hair and flesh so 
soft that it seemed the pressure of a finger-tip would leave a 
bruise. She answered Garsh's greeting lazily. 

“ Sure, I slept good. Better’n bumpin' the ties after a 
one-nighter, Johnny.” 

“ More better, every way. Liddle Players sure fire, 
eh?” 

“ I'll tell the world . . . 'ith you backin' it.” 

He gave a slow laugh, studying the girl's face with a 
keen gaze. “Y'mean that, Janey?” 

“ Sure. 'Ith you behind it.” 

Barbara kept close to her, drinking in the careless 
graciousness that Jane Treves showed her. Garsh dealt out 


122 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

parts with a tumble of words hopelessly confusing and 
Barbara ruffled through the three-page, blue-covered pam¬ 
phlet that he handed to her and let Jane explain some of 
the more incomprehensible remarks. Afterward, in the 
interval before the rehearsal which was called for one, she 
suggested that they lunch together. Jane acquiesced in¬ 
dolently. She just as leave, she said, only she’d just had 
breakfast. 

“ You were up at Franklin, weren’t you, week before 
last?” 

“ That was where I’d seen you,” Jane said smiling a little. 
“ I been tryin’ to think. I knew it was somewheres. You 
was with a buncha college fellas.” 

“ Yes.” Pitiful it was, fishing for a mention of Ruddy. 
Jane’s eyes narrowed and her mouth drooped slightly open 
as she considered Barbara. 

“We was at liberty that week, Garsh and me,” she 
explained. “And there’s a real fair hotel up to Frank¬ 
lin.” 

She had been on the stage five years, three of them with 
Garsh. Barbara could see that she pinned a certain faith 
to John Garsh. 

“ You take any these Kike kids that has learned their 
way around’s soon as they’re dry behind the ears, and, say, 
girl, they move, lemme tell you. His real name’s Ivan 
Garshin and he’s born a Yid, but the clerk out to the old 
River House in Rock Island called him Johnny, I expect, 
the first time he beckoned him off the bell-hop’s bench; and 
then he cut off the 4 in ’ himself. John Garsh. You can 
say sometime I told you he’d be the John Garsh one of these 
days. He knows his way, I’ll say . . . and his way’s 

the uproad to the Big Town. Beauseant give me that 
line.” 

“ Beauseant?” 

“ That young Jew fella with the big Christian Science 
pin. Hyatt, his name is, but we call him Beauseant outa 
the Lady of Lyons. Dju ever see Lady of Lyons? It 
goes so big in these college towns I thought maybe you 


JANE TREVES 123 

had. Of course, it’s the movies now-days. . . . Any¬ 
way, Beauseant’s been with Garsh since the beginning when 
Johnny was prop man with a rep comp’ny that got stranded 
out to Hibbing, Minnesota. Manager skipped with the kale 
and it looked like the ghost had quit walking. Johnny 
wasn’t quite nineteen but he took that comp’ny just like it 
was and made money off it. He always makes money. 
It’s like Beauseant says. ‘ He’ll pull this amateur stunt 
right, here. . . Somep’n diffrunt. Garsh, he gives 

himself three years now to hit the Big Town, fifteen alto¬ 
gether since he took out that first show.” 

Afterward, reviewing everything that Jane had said, 
Barbara could not help wondering about Ruddy. In what, 
exactly, lay Jane’s charm? Why should he have chosen 
Jane? Well ... to pass the time. But put it the 
other way around. Suppose an actor of Jane’s type, the 
masculine equivalent of Jane, should come to pass the time 
with Barbara . . . time that she might have spent with 

Ruddy. What appeal, for instance, would the leading man 
have? He talked incessantly about himself . . . but 

no more than Jane; and exhaled an unsesthetic odor com¬ 
pounded of scent and cigarettes . . . but no more than 

Jane. Why should she be bored to tears with Dillingham 
and Ruddy choose to pass the time with Jane? Men en¬ 
joyed a girl like that, she knew, kissed her, even . . . 

sometimes . . . married her. Why? What had Jane 

more than Barbara? 

She was pretty, but it wasn’t her prettiness that counted. 
Something too flawless was in her perfection, the artificiality 
of professional beauty. And she did not even pretend to 
be clever. (Though Ruddy might not notice that.) She 
wasn’t well-bred. It was only too evident in all she said 
or did, in her table manners, in the lazy patter of her 
talk, made up largely of the current catch-phrases, in the 
inflections of her voice. Yet she was, without any gentility, 
gentle. She was the type that one connected with a certain 
vague ugliness of existence but she was never ugly. She 
was not at all the courtesan of Barbara’s fancy, not flaunt- 


124 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

ing, not harsh. She was, on the whole, rather appealing. 
Even in her quick gusts of anger. 

It was in one of these that Jane herself summed up her 
incongruities. A snarling little altercation broke out with 
Dillingham over lines and Jane spat out phrases, 

“You shut your mouth, you big boob. God damn you, 
. . . I’m a lady. They’s nobody ever said diffrunt 

either. You mind that when you talk to me. Damn your 
dirty hide. . . . I’m a lady. See ? ” 

II 

There were sensations of that summer that Barbara never 
forgot. The sudden coolness of the alley leading to the 
stage door after the sun-baked streets. The indefinable 
smells in the narrow hall and the letters stuffing the mail- 
tray. The shaft of dusty sunlight streaming across the 
table in the costumer’s loft where she and Jane spent hours 
pulling over the stuffs heaped in every corner. The pres¬ 
sure of sweaty people crowding about her in the street-car 
late at night, breathing heavily close to her while she bent 
over her thin part, stupidly memorizing lines that wavered 
before her sleep-ridden eyes. The odor of the Saturday 
night coffee coming in to help them through the dress-re¬ 
hearsal that Garsh held after the evening performance and 
Garsh’s living voice: “All right, folks. All right. Let’s go.” 

On the whole, she liked it. No better, perhaps, than she 
would have liked anything that absorbed her waking hours 
and sent her to bed dog-weary, at night. She had a woman’s 
indifference to impersonal things, keeping all her keen likes 
and dislikes for humans; and she had, too, a woman’s 
natural appetite to please, to do what was expected of her. 

She got on rather well. The plays were well-chosen and 
adapted cunningly to the eagerness and youth of their small 
cast. Garsh offered nine performances of the current pro¬ 
duction, spent all the mornings and four afternoons a week 
rehearsing the play to follow and required that all the com¬ 
pany report at the theater by seven-thirty. In her scanty 
leisure, Barbara concocted costumes and studied her part 


125 


JANE TREVES 

for the next week but one. Except for Jane, her associates 
affected her very little. They seemed unimportant passing 
figures, like the children in the apartments across the street 
from St. Agatha’s, with whom she had played pull-away. 
They cared only moderately for the plays beyond their lines 
and their applause . . . and nothing for anything out¬ 

side those plays. She saw them overstrained, untalented, 
embroiled in stinging little feuds: the feeling between 
Nancy Danyers on whom the white light of Broadway beat, 
and the woman, older than she whom she had understudied 
in her first company, the quarrels of the St. John-Bridges, 
the harrying of Dillingham by a procession of collectors. 
No one among them was kin of hers . . . except 
Jane Treves. 

She was held to Jane by a queer fascination, half liking, 
half suspicion. Everything the other girl did seemed im¬ 
pressive, rousing a poignant interest. At the root of this 
almost solemn attraction was a familiar sick pain but Barbara 
was careful never to dig down to the root. She considered 
only the profuse upper growth flowering in friendliness and 
intimacy, the hold Jane had upon her. Her careless so¬ 
phisticated comments on men, on women, on plays and 
actors, on dress, religion, perfumes, hypocrites, cold creams 
and stage superstitions and her indolent carpe diem 
philosophy caught at Barbara’s imagination. Jane was the 
third on that high mountain-top where hitherto there had 
been only herself and Ruddy. 

She delivered miserably the half of her kingdom to Jane. 
She acknowledged her potency and knew a kind of torment 
whenever an occasional letter came into the mail-tray ad¬ 
dressed to Jane in Ruddy’s ragged writing. But she was 
never quite sure just what the situation was. She sus¬ 
pected that Jane’s absences might be explained by Ruddy’s 
leave . . . (He had leave. Of course, he had leave. 

What did he do with it?) ; she imagined passionate phrases 
for the thin letters that Ruddy wrote . . . phrases he 

had never written her; a frantic fear tore at something 
inside her when she thought that he might marry Jane be- 


126 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

fore he left . . . but she never so much as mentioned 
his name aloud. She wondered if Ruddy had coached Jane 
not to talk . . . (“Because he must know I’m here 
with her. If he cared at all, he’d find out where I am.”) 

The truth was, she was glad that no opportunity for 
speech arose. She wanted above everything to go on pre¬ 
tending that the silence between them was but a lovers’ 
estrangement destined to come right as it did inevitably in 
books. She shut out obvious conclusions and clung obsti¬ 
nately to that conviction. Ruddy loved her. He had said he 
loved her. Less than two months ago he had wanted to 
marry her. Jane Treves could not mean so much to him 
as she had meant. Could not. It was outrageous that he 
did not write . . . even if he couldn’t come, even if 

he’d never had leave, he might write. . . . Barbara 

clung to Jane, suspicious of her, fearing her, liking her, 
envying her, despising her, wondering about her. . . . 

The intensity of her interest in Jane gradually brought 
Garsh into the marginal field of her consciousness. Be¬ 
cause Garsh was in love with Jane. To the others he was 
merely an impassive Jew, easy to work for, possessing an 
almost mechanical grasp of theatrical detail. But Barbara, 
through the thin wall of her dressing-room, had heard Jane 
quarreling with him. 

“If I wanta . . . don’ be a grouch, Johnny. Or 

lemme alone. It’s my own life I live and nobody else can 
live it, see? If I wanta go, it’s my own business and where 
I go and who I go there with . . . that’s my own busi¬ 

ness, too.” 

Barbara could not make out the words Garsh used. She 
heard only the patient murmur of his voice and Jane’s ris¬ 
ing note . . . 

“ Yeah ... I just wisht you’d try it. Nobody runs 
me nor nobody ever will. It can’t always be the show- 
shop. . . . Gosh. You’d never understand . . . 

you being bugs over shows like you always been. But me 
. . . Honest t’ God, Johnny ... I get stale. 
Things get awful stale with me . . . tiresome and 


127 


JANE TREVES 

. . . stale. I like excitement. . . . (Ruddy, too. 
Ruddy liked excitement.) Yeah, I know. You c’n talk that 
way ... but it’s my life. It don’t belong to nobody 
but me.” 

Crude as Garsh was, he forced a certain warmth of lik¬ 
ing. He came of a patient race and possessed a mysterious 
quality that stirred Barbara as a chord of music or a line of 
perfect prose sometimes stirred her, to a vibrating sense 
of joy. Garsh felt beauty as a tangible thing. He never 
forgot what he wanted of a play, what the effect was that 
he wished to produce, returning again and again to a 
line or a scene that would carry a poignant moment 
across the footlights. It was a wordless desire for perfected 
grace which could be realized only through those others 
who became wax in his hands. For Garsh the thing 
was there. One could feel it even in the mangled lines 
delivered at rehearsal behind the patched, unpainted drop. 

In Jane Treves he found an instrument of expression. 
Her mind responded to suggestion and she could achieve 
his intention with a parrot-like interpretation. She was not 
clever enough to do anything, however simple, without him 
and she did not try. He built her parts for her, word upon 
word, movement upon movement, until artifice took on the 
semblance of spontaneity. 

“ Some day a star,” he said in the careful homely speech 
that he had shorn of its early vulgarisms. “ A liddle time 
to wait; and then a star’s name . . . Jane Treves 
. . . in lights.” 

“ Never in this world,” his stage-manager told him. 
" Don’t let this here Treves kid you, Mr. Garsh. She can’t 
even read her lines ’ithout someone telling her.” 

“ I give myself five years,” said Garsh. 

He seemed almost to achieve it that summer at the Prin¬ 
cess. By August, Jane Treves ranked with Nancy Danyers 
in popularity with the audiences that packed the little 
theater on all but the hottest nights. Garsh traded on her 
popularity, advertised it cunningly. She was to have the 
leads when Nancy went back for fall rehearsal. 


128 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ Whyn’t you stay, too?” Jane asked Barbara just as 
they closed. It was a rainy afternoon, with a dank drizzle 
falling and they had not changed into ordinary after the 
matinee. Garsh sent the doorman out to the nearest res¬ 
taurant for Hamburger sandwiches and coffee and the three 
spread their meal on a dusty property table in the wings. 
“ Ill say it’s easy money. And you like it. You know you 
like it.” 

“ But I don’t quite love it,” Barbara said. “ It’s just a 
job to me. And you ought to love it, Jane, as Mr. Garsh 
and Nancy D. love it so that you make it the biggest thing 
in your life. You ought to love it . . . like a man 
loves a woman.” 

Jane’s somnolent eyes went slowly to Barbara’s face and 
she laughed. “ Whaddya know ? Like a man loves a 
woman. Look at her blushin’, Johnny. You going back to 
college, then ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“An’ all the Johnnies ’at you know gone off to war? 
Gay time you’ll have ’ithout the Johnnies, Ill tell the world. 
Whyn’t you stay, like I said . . . easy money an’ all.” 

Jane wanted her near where she could watch her. Ruddy 
had been coaching her. “ But it isn’t easy, really. Maybe, 
while you’re young. Or when you’ve reached the top. But 
it’s rather pitiful when you never are going to reach the 
top and aren’t young any more. Look at old Isabel St. John. 
What’s she?” 

“ She’s the meal-ticket. Bridges couldn’t make his cakes 
alone.” 

“ But she’s ditching him. She’s reached the place where 
she can take care of one . . . perhaps. They’ve rowed 

about things all summer. She’s ditching him.” 

“ That’s the woman of it,” Jane said, gathering up the 
crumbs of a greasy sandwich and tipping her head back to 
put them in her mouth. With the deepening shadows of the 
stage behind her, she looked ethereal, exquisite. The line 
of her throat and lifted chin, the curve of her white shoul¬ 
der rising from a sixteenth-century gown, were things to 


JANE TREVES 129 

stamp themselves indelibly upon the memory. “Women 
are mean.” 

“ It's the human of it . . . instinct of self-preserva¬ 

tion, perhaps,” Barbara answered out of the loan of Anne’s 
philosophy. “ Men are mean sometimes, too.” 

“ Yes, by God.” She pushed back, her finger-tips cling¬ 
ing to the table and laughed a little. “ Oh . . . I’m 
not talkin’ about you, Johnny. You’re one o’ this kind, 
you can put your finger on. You know what I think o’ 
you.” 

Garsh put out a pudgy hand and patted her bare arm. 
“ Sure, I know, kiddo. Sure. But this ain’t like you. 
Somethin’s eatin’ you.” 

“You believe in me, don’t you, Johnny?” 

“ I sure do. Ain’t I said you’ll be gettin’ across big in 
a year-two now? Lookit all the ways you’ve come since 
that scared-white little kiddo hit me for a job that time out 
to Mason City. We’re on the uproad, you and me. We’ll 
hit the Big Town, one these days. Sure, I believe in you.” 

Incomprehensibly, Barbara knew that it was not quite 
what Jane had meant. Sly contempt hid under the smiling 
tenderness of her eyes. “You done a lot for me, I’ll say, 
Johnny. 4 You made me what I am to-day.’ I guess I’m 
tyin’ to you, all right. Other men is all right to play around 
with and I says, many a time, they’s too many nice ones ever 
to tie to one. But . . .” 

“ Now, kiddo, this ain’t like you. You’re a liddle tired. 
Couldn’t we . . . like I says Sunday . . . couldn’t 
we, maybe, go away ? ” 

“ And didn’ we say if we kep’ the house dark this week, 
you’d hump yourself twenty hours a day gettin’ it ready? 
You got a job, Boy.” 

“Aw, kiddo, what’s a week? All in a lifetime. You’re 
tired.” 

“ No, I’m not. Yes. Yes ... I am, Johnny.” Her 
drooping lids lifted suddenly and Barbara was startled at 
the look in her eyes. “ I can’t shake it. It’s the heat and 
all. I’d like . . . this week ... to go off some- 


130 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

wheres and rest . . . just rest. Go off in the country 

somewheres.” 

“ Couldn’t we ? Like I was tellin’ you ? ” 

“ I b’lieve I’d rather go just by myself, Johnny. A week 
. . . by myself. If I could go next week before you 
start rehearsin’ me for fall, I’d . . . like it.” 

“ Sure. You ... do that. If you like a thing, 
that’s all I want.” But his eyes were grave. He hitched 
his chair closer peering at her through an awkward mo¬ 
ment. They were curiously oblivious of Barbara. Jane 
laughed a little. 

“ I’ll come back next Saturday. Shall I ? ” An odd 
mounting sharpness was in her voice. “ And then I’ll eat 
the work you got for me. Rehearse . . . say, Boy, 

twenty-four hours a day I’ll rehearse. You can talk about 
your Nancy Danyers . . . we’ll be shouldering Nancy 

D., won’t we, Johnny? Shouldn’t wonder if we shouldered 
past her, takin’ the uproad, like she shouldered past Leilia. 
After this year, the Big Town, like you said. We oughta 
make it, hadn’t we? I got a feeling like this year’s my 
year.” 

Four days later she was dead. 

Ill 

The headlines stared up from the morning paper which 
Barbara had spread wide on the back of the seat ahead; 
and she read the indefinite statement over uncomprehend- 
ingly. Suddenly the words cut across her eyes like the 
blow of a whip . . . “ Jane Treves. Killed by Train 
at Maywood.” 

Maywood. That was the place Ruddy had mentioned the 
day in May when he had wanted her to marry him. Was 
Ruddy in this? A hot, sharp pang went through her and 
she searched the quarter-column for a glimpse of Ruddy’s 
name. But there was nothing. And, a moment later, reason 
had rushed to the rescue. After all, Maywood was simply 
a country town not too far away, where Jane had gone to 
rest. Naturally, Ruddy might have told her about it, or 


131 


JANE TREVES 

given her the address. Jane had been driving a car . . . 

(and she was erratic about driving) ... a Ford coupe 
hired from the village garage for the week. The engine 
had stalled on the track at a dangerous curve that had seen 
other accidents. Perhaps the sound of an approaching train 
had frightened her. She was alone in the car and had been 
killed instantly. An inquest had been held, her manager 
sent for. 

The thing was incredible. Jane Treves . . . that 

white vibrant beauty of her gone out. Such things did not 
happen. Barbara felt that there was some mistake, some¬ 
thing yet to be explained. She read the item for a fifth 
time. There was the name . . . Jane Treves. 

At the corner nearest the theater she dropped off the car 
impulsively and made her way to Jane’s rooming-house. 
The door was open and at the sound of her own footsteps 
on the vestibule linoleum, Barbara stopped still. A woman 
was standing at the foot of the stairs talking to two men. 
Afterward, Barbara recalled the harpy effect of her scraggy 
neck and the harsh vibration of her voice. 

“ And you, Miss ? ” 

“ I’m Barbara Fallows. I came to ... to ask about 
Miss Treves.” 

“ Friend V hers?” 

“ Yes. I was in the company.” 

One of the men began scribbling on a thin pad of paper, 
looking at her curiously. After an interval of silence, 
Barbara spoke impatiently. “ Hasn’t anyone come besides 
me ? Where is Mr. Garsh ? ” 

“ Garsh . . .” the old woman said vaguely. “ The 

comp’ny manager went down there last night, him and 
Hinds’ man ... to bring the body. If you went over 
to Hinds’ parlors, if you wanted to see her . . .” 

Barbara shook her head. She could not face death. 
The tragedy, useless and earthy as it was, lay in the im¬ 
mobility of that slim white body. “ No. It wasn’t that. 
It was just ... I came to see if there mightn’t be 
something I could do.” 


132 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ You could pack her stuff,” the landlady said sharply. 
“ I ain’t got no time, and her trunk up there in her room 
don’t do me no good. A man was here this morning askin’ 
for a room. ... I’d be glad to see the whole job done 
and over.” 

With a sudden hardness, Barbara turned swiftly up the 
stairs and pushed open the door of Jane’s room. The shades 
were drawn and in the meagre light filtering about their 
edges, the place looked pitifully mean. Barbara stopped 
inside the door, her heart beating fast. For all her im¬ 
maturity, she had accumulated a store of understanding, 
taken at first hand from a thousand observations. Some¬ 
thing was terribly wrong. 

A few frocks were hanging in the closet, frail unmended 
garments smeared with powder at the neck and sleeves. 
Under a roll of soiled stockings in the bureau, Barbara came 
on one of Ruddy’s letters. She read it through deliberately, 
but it was empty and vague of meaning. For all its char¬ 
acteristic phrases, it was a hasty letter and she could not 
as she had been able to do with her own letters from him, 
find vivid reality behind its commonplace sentences. Ruddy 
had no words and Jane had had none. It would never 
have been possible for Jane to turn a letter from Ruddy 
into a burning, lovely thing as Barbara had done times with¬ 
out number. For the first time in their strange intimacy, 
she pitied Jane. What had she had but husks? 

Garsh came up the stairs with another man, the insistent 
voice of the landlady croaking behind them. He nodded to 
Barbara from the threshold and took off his hat, rubbing the 
palm of his hand against his forehead. His face wore a 
look of blurred, incredulous pain. . . . 

“ You’re here, are you ? ” he said. " So you heard about 
it already?” 

“ It was in the paper this morning, Mr. Garsh.” 

“Yes. So you saw the paper?” He stood stupidly, his 
eyes wandering around the room, his fleshy mouth curiously 
compressed. “ Well . . . you can see . . . This 
is Mr. Carlson . . . her brother . . . you can see 


133 


JANE TREVES 

it is her room. Well ... it wasn’t how I thought 
she’d come back. Yon remember what she said about com¬ 
ing back, Miss Fallows. Not . . . like this. I . . . 

we was going to be married Saturday when she came back.” 

So that was it. Then Ruddy had meant nothing to Jane 
Treves, after all. All those long weeks that sickening deep 
pain had been a figment of her brain. A soaring gladness 
winged through her as she moved backward and forward 
between the shallow closet and the trunk she shoved into 
the hall outside the door, folding, smoothing, pressing down. 
It was Garsh Jane had loved, all the time. 

She heard fragments of the talk passing between Garsh 
and Jane Treves’ . . . Jane Carlson’s brother: arrange¬ 
ments for the funeral at the undertaking parlors, the hour 
of a convenient train . . . Garsh’s explanation of the 

accident ... a mention of marriage. . . . “It 

wouldn’t of changed ’Manda none,” her brother said. Then 
he chuckled. 

The noon whistles had blown long before Barbara had 
finished the packing. As she sat on the lid, bending over 
to secure the lock, she saw Carlson peering at her through 
the spindles of the banister. He had a flabby Scandinavian 
face and moist protuberant eyes. She looked past him with 
a quiver of disgust. 

“Tired?” he asked jovially. 

She shook her head, fastening a determined gaze on a 
figure in the wall-paper just behind his left ear and as¬ 
suming an air of inexhaustible patience. 

“ Stand you to a bite of lunch,” he suggested. “ I didn’t 
get your name, sister.” 

“ Fallows. No, please don’t bother. I’m quite through.” 

“ I’ve been waitin’ for you,” he explained. “ Shook the 
Yid and come back just now. The minute I seen you this 
morning in ’Manda’s room, I says to myself, ‘There’s the 
girlie’ll play around with me.’ I gotta be here two days. 
We could about see this burg in two days, sister . . . 

couldn’t we ? ” He made a sweeping gesture and came to¬ 
ward her, his impudent eyes smiling. 


134 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

And, grotesquely, there came back to Barbara the mem¬ 
ory of a woman’s passionate sobbing falling over her as she 
cowered on the floor of a corridor outside one of St. 
Agatha’s closed doors. She had an instant recognition of 
death, the more desolate because there was no weeping, be¬ 
cause this leering creature could profane the threshold of 
that room where beauty had been. Under her air of queer 
bravado, fear grew in her heart. As she stood up, close 
to him, she thought, “ If he touches me, I shall scream.” 

But she did not. She had no breath for screaming. Be¬ 
sides she had never dreamed that any man’s kiss could be 
as dreadful as all that. She lay limp on his arm, her mouth 
working. 

“ Don’t you pretend you didn’t like it.” He pinched her 
chin between his huge fingers. “ Come now, sister. Be 
nice to me.” 

“ You fool,” she said in a low voice. The next second 
she snatched herself back and stood at bay, trembling. 
“ You fool. You fool!’ 

She darted down the stairs and out into the sunny street. 
When, at last, she ventured to slow to a walk, her teeth 
were chattering and her hands were tremulous. She went 
on blindly through unfamiliar streets, found after a long 
time that she was faint and hungry, and with a materialism 
borrowed from Anne Linton, who insisted on caring for 
the body however sick the spirit, she went into a cafeteria 
and bought a bowl of soup and some rolls. She forced 
herself to eat slowly, feeling the warmth of the food travel 
through her body with a sense of relief and relaxation. 
Back at St. Agatha’s, late in the afternoon, she dropped 
down on the Chesterfield, tucked the worn yellow pillow 
under her cheek and slept till dusk. 

The first thing she saw when she wakened was a battered 
Panama hat on the table . . . Torrey’s. Torrey him¬ 

self . . . a shabby loose man in a gray suit that 
shrieked aloud for an hour at the tailor’s . . . was 

looking over Anne’s shoulder at a paper crackling in her 
nervous hands. 


JANE TREVES 135 

Barbara gave a sleepy cluck of greeting and they 
turned. 

“ Barbara. Barbara,” Anne said hardly above a whisper. 
“ What have you done ? What were you doing this morn¬ 
ing down at that place after Jane Treves’ . . . 

after . . 

Barbara sat up, pushing her fingers through the soft 
waves of hair that dropped about her face. Even her agita¬ 
tion did not blind Anne to the beauty of that childish ges¬ 
ture. 

“ So they were reporters,” Barbara said musingly. “ I 
wondered ... I was putting Jane’s clothes in her 
trunk. Her name wasn’t Jane, really. It was Amanda. 
Amanda Carlson.” 

Anne’s eyes went back to the paper. “ Why should you 
go there at all? You rush ahead so, never asking. Why 
didn’t you come to me? I could have put her clothes 
in her trunk. They’d never have thought of sketching 
me. 

“ Was he sketching me?” Barbara asked interestedly, and 
came to look. “ But . . . that’s an outrageous, terrible 
thing. Torrey ... do I look like that?” 

“ It’s the kind of rag it is,” Torrey explained con¬ 
temptuously. He was city editor on a much better paper. 
“ They’ve garbled it. At that I was afraid it might be 
worse. When the stuff began coming in this forenoon; 
you know, when I ’phoned you, Anne.” 

“And where were you all afternoon, Barbara?” 

“ I was walking. I had to walk, Anne. You weren’t 
. . . looking for me ? ” 

“ Torrey was,” Anne said briefly. “ Since before lunch. 
There was a rumor that you’d been with her, this week-end. 
Oh, Barbara, why did you go ? ” 

“ But I wanted to go. I’m glad I went. There was no 
one else.” Her assurance flooded back on her and her 
eyes shone. “ I’m glad I went, Anne. There was some¬ 
thing I’ve worried about ... I’d misjudged Jane.” 

Anne’s right fist beat softly into her left palm. “ I hate 


136 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

this, Barbara. I hate a thing like this. Why didn't Mr. 
Garsh see to things? He was the manager/’ 

“ He only came in for a moment. He’d been up there 
at Maywood . . . and he was all broken up, any¬ 
way. You see Jane was coming back to marry him on 
Saturday.” 

Torrey looked up in surprise, turned his head slowly and 
looked at Anne through a blank silence. Anne’s lips parted. 
Barbara stood, regarding them thoughtfully, wondering at 
their intensity and feeling that the beat of her heart was 
audible in the stillness. She thought suddenly of that June 
night when she had lain awake at Pinelands, believing that 
life was to unroll before her like a parchment for her 
perusal. It occurred to her that she was beginning to know 
what the screed revealed; and she was astonished that she 
liked it so little. 

But the next moment she discovered Ruddy’s letter lying 
on the bookcase. The new Probationer must have brought 
it up from the last mail. She took it down, ran a hairpin 
through the envelope and drew out a sheet of foolscap, with 
an apologetic glance at Anne. It was one of Ruddy’s fa¬ 
miliar scrawls. He was going, he said . . . overseas 
. . . transferred . . . was on his way to a port of 

embarkation. Lucky stiff, wasn’t he? But it had been 
pull, a little of it . . . his father and some high mucky- 

muck. All he wanted now was for her to write and tell 
him everything was jake again. He’d had his little mad 
. . . oh, it was no use talking about that. He couldn’t 

go on, over there, without her. That was all. She was his 
girl and he loved her. Would she write? 

“ What does she see in him, Torrey? ” Anne had thrown 
on a wrap and walked to the corner simply to ask the ques¬ 
tion. “ Can you tell me? ” 

“ He’s a good-looking young devil.” 

“ Such earthy good looks.” 

“ Barbara may not think of that. And he’s . 5 . 
rich.” 

“ Barbara has never thought of that. I doubt if she 


JANE TREVES 137 

realizes it. Torrey, did you see the look on her 
face? ” 

“ Yes,” Torrey said. “ Perhaps it’s that gay recklessness 
. . . that certainty that he’s on the sunny side of the 

street. Barbara isn’t . . . certain about anything. She 
hasn’t found herself any more than Jim had found himself 
at nineteen ... or twenty-five, for that matter. She’s 
like Jim.” 

“ When Jim found himself, it was too late,” Anne said 
in a strained tone. “ That’s not very consoling.” 

“ Have you tried talking to her? ” 

“ She thinks I don’t like him. I don’t. But that’s not 
the whole of it. If I try talking about a thing I care about, 
I’m shy and constrained . . . and I care about this. 

I’m afraid of making some dreadful mistake.” She quoted 
Browning, “ ‘ It’s an awkward thing to play with souls.’ 
I can’t have a shadow over us now, these last weeks before 
I leave.” 

“ You haven’t told Barbara you’re leaving? ” 

“ I shall before she goes back to college. I’m rather ex¬ 
pecting her to guess it.” 

“ She’s never been good at guessing. It’s all right, Anne, 
we’ll look out for her ... all of ’94 that’s left. And 
don’t worry about this chap. The war’s bound to change 
things for all of us. When he comes back, the whole thing 
may be off.” 

When Anne came in, Barbara was writing Ruddy. Three 
narrow pages but she poured out her heart. And she began 
her letter, “ Beloved.” 


VIII 


THE TOWER-ROOM 

Everybody at college knew about Jane Treves. Nelle 
Palmer knew and Eleanor Lewis and Mrs. Wilson whose 
sharp eyes slewed around inquiringly at Barbara when she 
unlocked the door of the tower-room for her. The new 
girls in the house knew and gazed at her wide-eyed across 
the table. The registrar knew for he looked up startled 
from the card Barbara handed him and said, “ Oh, yes 
. . . Barbara Fallows ” and coughed snifflingly through 

his nose. He spoke to his assistant and the assistant 
glanced quickly across his desk as if he were comparing 
the face in the registration window with the penciled sketch 
in the newspaper. Ned Dalrymple, wandering about the 
campus that week on leave, put his wonder into words. 

“ However did you come to do it, Babs ? Getting mixed 
up in a thing like that . . . almost like a murder.” 

“ It was nothing like a murder,” she said coldly. “ It 
was a terrible accident. You wouldn’t have stayed away 
if something happened like that to a friend of yours, would 
you ? ” 

“ Oh . . . friend. Come now, Babs. Where did you 

ever get the friend stuff? Just an actress, wasn’t she, that 
you’d met? ” 

“ She’d had the next dressing-room all summer.” 

“ But the paper sort of . . .” 

“ That wasn’t my fault.” 

She felt an uneasy disapproval all about her. To the 
collective mind it was an evidence of bad taste to figure on 
the first page of a newspaper . . . queer. And the old 

conspicuousness of the Dauntless Three weighted the bal¬ 
ance of opinion. By the end of a fortnight a definite effect 


THE TOWER-ROOM 


139 


was established. In the try-outs for the Dramatic Club 
Play, she won the lead, and the next day the president asked 
her if she minded giving it up. 

“ Amateur performance, y’know, Babs. There’s criticism 
on this favoring professionals . . . like football. Can’t 

play the professional game summers, old thing, eh? That’s 
the way I look at it.” 

“ You know perfectly that isn’t it at all,” Barbara said. 

“Oh . . . well,” he capitulated, “I got nothing to 
say, so many fellows gone and all. The way I look at it, 
Babs, they’re green with envy.” 

But she denied that. It was anything but envy. “ They’re 
sending me to Coventry,” she said to Miriam from the win¬ 
dow-seat in the tower-room. It was October but the frost 
had as yet only crisped the leaves, making the air serene 
and ashen, and the window was open. “ I want you to 
know before you unpack your trunks.” 

Miriam laughed. She was a month late for the term 
and had just come from Banff. She lay across the bed in a 
clinging negligee, her hair knotted in a fashion that made 
her look thirty, a cigarette between her lips. 

“ Nice quiet place . . . Coventry.” 

“ It’s a rocky road to travel.” Barbara’s face darkened 
with a flush. “ No, I don’t want to smoke, now, Myrrh. 
You may have scruples about staying here with me.” 

“ I’ve my own plans for the year,” she smiled, lazily in¬ 
different to Barbara’s mood. “ Of course, I don’t know 
what you’ve done.” 

“ It wasn’t anything I did. At least I could not have 
done differently. I forgot you hadn’t seen the papers. It 
was Jane Treves.” 

“ Go on.” 

Barbara told the story briefly, the bare facts. When she 
was done they sat quietly for a little, the smoke of Miriam’s 
cigarette filling the room with an alien odor. A smile played 
over her knowing lips. Her eyes, fastened on Barbara, were 
speculative. 

“ You must have seen a good bit of the seamy side, 


140 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

this summer, Babs, playing around with people like 
that.” 

Barbara’s lips became ironic. “ Don’t be provincial, 
Myrrh. You aren’t the type to carry it. People like that 
are just like other people. It’s everlastingly hard work and 
you’re at it hour after hour. I didn’t see any seams and I 
didn’t like what I saw a lot. There’s a terrible futility 
about the game for most of those that play it, it seems to me. 
I . . . made good, I guess. At least, Mr. Garsh offered 

me a contract for this winter.” 

“ Funny you thought of doing it in the first place,” 
Miriam said. “ What started you ? ” 

Barbara considered. She would have liked to explain the 
almost instinctive decisions that seemed so much like step¬ 
ping-stones across whatever brook separated her from 
Ruddy; but it concerned her too intimately. “ I was 
hard up,” she said in a flippant tone, “ and it’s easy 
money.” 

That was not her reason. That was Jane Treves’ reason, 
not hers. “ Believe me, girl, it’s easy money. . . .” 

She thought of that lost white loveliness and shivered a 
little and retracted. “ It isn’t easy money . . . ever. 

You don’t lay up a cent. But it is an experience, Myrrh. 
And all experience is valuable, don’t you think? You 
learn to know yourself.” 

Surely that random vagueness was not hers. It was part 
of some exposition, satisfactory on the whole, but without 
application to herself. “ But it wasn’t that that sent me,” 
she added in a flash of frankness. “ I don’t know why I 
did it.” This, with its faint suggestion of animosity was as 
near as she got to the situation and sighting peril even here, 
she slanted away with a quick sweep and began talking of 
something else, something that did not interest Miriam at 
all. ’ 

“Where’d you get the Orientals?” she interrupted. 
" They’re rather gorgeous old things, Babs. I could have 
picked out prettier ones, if you wanted to spend your sum¬ 
mer’s earnings that way.” 


THE TOWER-ROOM 141 

" They’re Anne’s. She wanted me to take care of them 
for her while she was gone.” 

Miriam cocked an inquiring eyebrow. “ Where? To 
France ? ” 

“ I don’t know just where but she thinks she may serve 
on a hospital ship sailing between Salonica and France. 
She’s on leave of absence from St. Agatha’s. . . . We 

broke up and she left about the fifteenth of September. 
I’ve not heard a word since she wrote from New York. 
Did you get the check I sent you, Myrrh ? ” 

“ Didn’t I write? We aren’t very intense correspondents, 
are we, Barbara? And I’ve been having a gorgeous time. 
What about the Three ? And Mark Hale ? ” 

“ Mr. Hale’s a major . . . gone. Ruddy and Ned 

are gone. Hamish McLaurin is married ... a war¬ 
wedding ... a girl called Dreka Masefield.” 

“ I had his cards,” Myrrh said crisply. “ Nobody I’d 
ever heard of. Did you know her?” 

Barbara nodded. “ And you have heard of her. I’ve told 
you. She was in our bunch down at Pinelands. I’m 
. . . glad Ham married her.” 

“ Why?” 

“ They’ve liked each other for so long.” 

" However, with the Three gone, you’re rather on your 
own.” 

“ I suppose so. And I hate losing them. I haven’t friends 
enough to let them go.” 

“ Dear child, you haven’t any friends.” Miriam rolled 
over and propped her face between her hands. The crimson 
silk of her robe gleamed darkly against the counterpane. 
“ You’ve always cut yourself off from friends, deliberately.” 

“ I know.” 

“Your little faux pas doesn’t matter to me.” Barbara 
winced a little at the subtle amusement in Myrrh’s voice. 
“ Whatever the rest believe, I think it was rather clever of 
you, Little One, to step out the way you’ve done this 
summer. You’ve savored a kind of life that would’ve been 
damnation to the ordinary jeune fille; and you’ve come 


142 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

through altogether prettier, you know, and with a hint of 
fascination about you . . . allure. You’ve never had 

that before. You don’t have to tell me a damned thing, 
darling; but you can’t mask your face. We’re different, 
Babs, you and I. I’ve learned that. We’re a million miles 
beyond the stupid commonplace women who haven’t the 
brains to think out their own codes. Ninety-eight out of 
every hundred abide, world without end, by the old sys¬ 
tem . . . hoary precept . . . Puritanic tradition 

. . . handed down from one generation to another and 

never ask a question. We’re the other two. Pagans.” 

It was amazing to hear. Barbara listened with a growing 
sense of astonishment. In a way, the things that Miriam 
said, having that crystalline hardness, gave her a hearten¬ 
ing courage, but in spite of herself a curious dislike flick¬ 
ered through her mind. She resented the fact that Myrrh, 
of all people, should see with that distorted vision. 

“ I do think,” Miriam went on frankly, “ that you just 
missed being clever. It isn't clever to give people the 
opportunity to criticize you; and apparently, they’re 
doing it.” 

“ They are.” 

“ Sorry,” said Miriam. “ I may as well break the news, 
Babs. My trunks aren’t coming up to the tower- 
room at all, though you can believe that it has nothing to 
do with this. It was all arranged before I came back at all. 
I’m just your guest for the night . . . and I will be, I 

expect, a good many nights, because I’m not going to let 
yon slip away . . . but I’m going sorority this fall. 

What is the use of having your father put over the gov¬ 
ernor’s campaign, if the gov’s daughter, right in the same 
college, does nothing for you? We had to pull a wire or 
two but I shouldn’t have come back without. Because it 
isn’t, you see, as if I had to graduate and work for a liv¬ 
ing like the second-rate crits you see scurrying around to 
classes. I’d really meant to work this for you, too, Childie 
. . . after a while. But it would be rather difficult 

now, you will admit.” 


THE TOWER-ROOM 143 

“ Oh, please. I don’t want you to work anything for 
>> 

me. 

Tears lay behind her eyelids and she closed them and 
turned her head away so that Myrrh could not see. 
(Miriam wasn’t to blame. She was doing nothing disloyal 
or unkind. It had just happened.) But Barbara had the 
wish to draw away from Myrrh, from everyone, from con¬ 
tact with life. One stood so alone. 

One had to stand alone. As Miriam had said, she had 
no friends. The Three, surrounding her, had cut her off; 
and now, when she needed them, the Three were gone. 
Myrrh was gone. She knew some lonely days there in the 
tower-room after Miriam left. It was not easy to stand 
outside and see her passing in and out of portals that seemed 
to swing blankly shut when Barbara came near. There 
were times when she almost hated Miriam’s imperturbabil¬ 
ity. 

She was friendly always, but she was . . . always 

. . . rushed. Miriam Payne was suddenly known 

everywhere. She played a game fast and loose and bril¬ 
liant. Her husky voice, her coolly knowing smile, the brand 
of cigarettes she smoked became the fashion. She was to 
be seen daily in someone’s long racer, she was the inspira¬ 
tion of daring verses in the Mag, and gay, shocking little 
quips in the annual. Her sorority seemed to become more 
important because of her. She gave it the final charm of 
sophistication. 

Barbara could draw a contrast in fine sharp clear lines. 
If she could have been humble, she would, for the appro¬ 
bation of her own kind had always been an important ven¬ 
ture. But there was no humility in her soul. The thing 
seemed cruel, a calamity undeserved. She went over and 
over the circumstances of that summer, analyzing all that 
she had done; and she could find nothing to regret. She 
could never be sorry that she had known Jane Treves or 
come close to her. For all that unvarying indolent com¬ 
monness, some secret bond existed between them. Jane had 
been such a warm and human thing. . . . 


144 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Outwardly, she wore an armored indifference. A certain 
bitter consolation lay in the fact that she could be a good 
loser, carrying off humiliation with pride, the ineradicable 
pride that enabled her to pay the piper when she called the 
tune. She might be marked but she was not beaten. She 
meant to brazen out this dismaying loneliness, not with the 
bold assurance of a woman found out, who throws up the 
game, but with a serene, tranquil defiance. “ This, too, will 
pass,” Anne had been accustomed to say in the face of doubt 
and disappointment, as if the things she had learned alone 
had given her an axiom of living. And day after day 
Barbara found herself coming back to that phrase of 
Anne’s ... or was it Lincoln’s ? . . . “ This, too, 
will pass.” 

More than ever, now, the tower-room seemed a place to 
hold a princess prisoner ... a rather forlorn princess 
with a lover gone to the wars. Except for consistent hours 
of tennis, Barbara spent much of her time there alone, 
studying so long as it seemed necessary to study, thinking 
a good deal while she lay on the window-seat, reading 
omnivorously. She used books, as she had in her little girl¬ 
hood, to build a high wall between herself and the realities. 
Things of the actual world were hazed over by her illusions. 
People whom she met every day were more of phantasy 
than Richard Feverel and Lucy or Tess Darbyville. She 
read everything. . . . 

Except about the war. Tales of adventure, of experi¬ 
ences in France left her cold sick. In the tower-room war 
was a mirage, a ghastly thing outside her life. She took no 
part in the affairs of every day, glancing through a con¬ 
fusion of headlines from an apathetic sense of duty. The 
boys . . . almost all the boys she knew . . . had 

gone, hearing the call to arms, and were in the thick of it. 
But even they had not blown the call to arms. No more 
than those left behind could they pretend to know why it 
had been blown. And those of her own generation left 
behind seemed never to be brushed with the thrilling winds 
of the world’s struggles and hopes. 


THE TOWER-ROOM 


145 


It was different with ’94. Barbara spent most of her 
week-ends with Anne’s friend, Ada Shurtleff, who made 
rather a point of it. Barbara had her own room, always 
waiting for her. And Torrey, too, was at hand when she 
dropped off the train to take her to dinner somewhere and 
to the theater. Here was contact, warming, heartening 
. . . with Torrey always a little abstracted as if he 

were thinking of things half a world away and Ada Shurt¬ 
leff, graying fast, but fresh, alive, eager in that world to¬ 
ward which Barbara was turning. She acted on a dozen 
committees and did the work of four women better than 
almost any four could have done it, with but one of her 
capable hands apparently; with the other she managed her 
household which consisted of a thin lawyer husband and 
three boys between nine and fifteen, and mothered Barbara. 
The little snatches of time they had together, after Torrey’s 
theater treat Saturday night or lingering over their coffee 
on Sunday morning, were pleasant snatches. They learned 
to talk rapidly, brushing in with quick strokes the canvas 
of the week, from Franklin lying peaceful beside her blue 
lake, to Anne’s hospital ship . . . and there were the 

Sunday nights when ’94 came in, filling Mrs. Shurtleff’s 
living-room with their clamor, less of their singing and 
more of their talk: the pressing spring drive of the Germans, 
the transportation of troops, the Salvation Army, the Red 
Cross. . . . 

It was characteristic of Barbara Fallows that the next 
summer and the next she went back to play at the Princess 
with John Garsh. The city wanted amusement and Garsh 
was bent on giving it. Her consciousness of him as absurd 
and crude had vanished. In his small playhouse he became 
an impersonal, dominating force before which no difficulty 
stood. The phrase “ John Garsh presents ” had lost op¬ 
probrium, the Little Theater idea had gained in interest. 
The papers took note of the Princess in their regular dra¬ 
matic round and critics began to give forth prophecies of 
success with the grave confidence of the Heaven-sent. 

' When she went back to Franklin in September for her 


146 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

senior year, the atmosphere had changed. She was not 
popular but a quiet unexpected friendliness came to her 
now and then. The old intimacy with Miriam revived. She 
brought up a mental agility sufficient to meet the demands 
of the classroom and the events of the college world. She 
was by no means dormant intellectually or emotionally, but 
. . . except for Armistice Day when the whistles began 

blowing suddenly and she found herself dancing on the 
curb, tears running down her face and the horrible fear 
tugging at her heart that something would still happen to 
Ruddy . . . she was quiescent. 

The months went by swiftly, replete with something close 
to content. In the spring she won the tennis championship, 
quietly. Commencement Day, hot and sticky, passed. Ex¬ 
cept for these events nothing much happened and Barbara 
expected even less than did happen. There was nothing that 
could happen until Ruddy came back safe from overseas. 


IX 


THE GOLD COAST 

I 

By the time he came it was September and Barbara was 
twenty-one. She was lounging with a magazine behind the 
green striped awning of the Shurtleff porch late one after¬ 
noon when the telephone rang in the hall; and before she 
opened the screen door she knew in her heart that it was 
some message about Ruddy. 

“ Barbara Fallows ? ” A thin voice, singularly petulant 
and childish inquired of her. “ I wish to speak to Barbara 
Fallows at Mrs. Grayson Shurtleff’s. Oh, yes. This is 
Dirck Gannet’s mother,” and after a moment’s silence, “ Do 
you hear me ? ” 

“ Yes. Ruddy has come home . . 

“ He’s set his heart on seeing you. He was bound to go 
straight to you. He telephoned just now. I told him you’d 
be here.” Again the brief pause. “ Do you hear? ” 

“ Yes, Mrs. Gannet.” 

“ Barbara. I want you to come ... as quickly as 
you can. I’ve been meaning to call on you . . . be¬ 
cause Ruddy asked me and I said I would . . . but 

I’ve not been well . . . I’m never very well . . . 

my nerves and all, and with this dreadful war and the 
waiting all these months . . . the anxiety. But I would 

rather he didn’t know. I’d rather you acted as if . . . 

I mean I wish you wouldn’t tell him. And if you’d waive 
ceremony and come here as if you’d been used to coming. 
Mr. Gannet understands. ... I wish you’d come to¬ 
night for dinner, Barbara. Have you any engagement that 
will interfere ? ” 

“ No, Mrs. Gannet.” 


148 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ I’ll send my car for you. Can you be ready in an 
hour ? ” 

“ Yes.” Hard to speak with her heart pounding. 
“ Thank you. . . .” 

The limousine was a marvel of luxury. A man in a gray 
livery took her bag and held open the door of the car for her, 
his eyes raking her face. Through the glass, she could see 
his stolid, broad back and phrases from a book she had read 
that summer came into her mind . . . the liveried un¬ 

productive servant who gave evidence of his master’s 
prowess, the equipage whose value lay not in its utility but 
its costliness, the conspicuous expenditure of a leisure class 
becoming the desideratum of an entire social organization 
. . . but beneath her stark thinking lay a sensuous de¬ 

light. The smooth swift movement, the motor’s even purr 
lulled and soothed her. She pressed her hand deep into the 
velvet of the cushions reveling in their softness, and took 
in the color and perfume of the roses in the crystal holder 
at her elbow with a languorous pleasure. 

As the car swept into the north-bound procession, she sat 
slim and very straight, breathing quickly and letting her 
careless glance just sweep the knot of faces gathered at 
the street corners. She loved the mauve dusk of the avenue 
pin-pricked by lavender arc-lights, its golden glow of sign¬ 
boards rising to the south. Twilight rose like a mist. The 
lake, beyond made ground, was a stretch of opal light, pul¬ 
satile, illimitable; the gray buildings an illusion without sub¬ 
stance. Only their upper stories, as she looked back, showed 
clearly in the higher light. 

They turned north into the Drive, following the line of 
shore with its low escarpment and strip of parking. An 
old familiar imagery touched her thoughts. A princess 
in a coach of glass and gold. A princess and a prince who 
had filled her dreams those years she lay imprisoned in a 
tower and whose kiss had wakened her. A happy princess, 
passing in royal fashion through the crowded city to the 
palace of the prince. . . . 

It was like a palace. From the car, slowing at the curb, 


THE GOLD COAST 149 

she looked up at a beautiful building set on a neck of land 
above the lake. Potted firs stood at either side of the wide 
door and above were the high mullioned windows of a 
foyer, each with its box of ivy trailing down over the red 
brick. Inside, the luxurious rooms gave an impression of 
enchanting loveliness. Subdued light broke through crystal 
bowls and was reflected dimly in the polished floors and 
panelings. There were deep, soft chairs, tiny carved tables, 
the silken sheen of rugs and draperies, a grand piano near 
a doorway, a couch the color of wine beneath a high win¬ 
dow. The bedroom where she took off her wrap was done 
in gray and rose with a French pier glass and rose brocade 
hangings. Mrs. Gannet sent a maid to help her. . . . 

It was the first time Barbara had thought of wealth in 
connection with Ruddy. She had loved him for so many 
things . . . for the tilt of his red, reckless mouth, for 

his slanting look, for the igniting touch of his hands; but 
now, through the feeling of awe that the luxury surround¬ 
ing him aroused, stole a warm pleasure that it was to be 
hers. She stood before the pier-glass and waved a fan of 
golden plumes at the reflection of a smiling, starry-eyed 
girl in a frock of creamy lace. Not a bad frock at all, with 
that twist of gold at the girdle. And a lucky, lucky 
girl. . . . 

She could have everything that money would buy. She 
could be more extravagant than most princesses dared to 
be and no one would ever call her to account again. She 
could have sables. She could have a maid to mend her 
clothes and brush her hair ... a grand piano of her 
own ... a limousine ... all the frocks she 
wanted ... all the jewels. 

In spite of herself her eyes, at the table, fastened on the 
rings on Mrs. Gannet’s hands. She felt them rather than 
appraised them, just as she felt the worth of the silver serv¬ 
ice and the heavy damask and the perfection of attention 
from the Japanese boy, soft-footed behind her chair. They 
sparkled before her like a myriad of flashing, fairy lights 
and she could not help looking . . • after a while she 


150 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

remembered that she had always pictured jewels on slender, 
white-fingered hands and Mrs. Gannet’s were absurdly 
stubby and fat. She was not a pretty woman. She had 
been pretty probably at fifteen in a fluffy kittenish fashion 
. . . her husband called her Puss . . . but at forty- 

five her face was heavy and her mouth drooped fretfully 
with hard lines at the corners. Her hair was touched with 
henna and her eyes seemed recedent and pale above the 
high color on her cheeks. 

Barbara was aware of a smarting sting of disappoint¬ 
ment. She had expected to love Ruddy's mother at sight, 
almost as much as she loved Anne. She had pictured her 
as a tall and stately woman with something of Ruddy’s 
charm. Her carmined lips and short, fat neck were any¬ 
thing but charming. Her voice was petulant and she had 
the habit of thin, incessant prattle . . . Ruddy’s 

mother. 

She liked his father better. After she overcame a slight 
revulsion at the persistent glossiness of his hair and nails 
and eyes, she found that he seemed big in a formless fash¬ 
ion if only one did not compare him with his son . . . 

just as his clothes, faultlessly tailored, looked undistinguished 
only beside Ruddy’s worn and nonchalant khaki. She con¬ 
ceived him as working hard and pouring out all he had 
lavishly on the two people who were dependent on him 
. . . a man without any interests beyond the making and 

spending of money, a man who never read books, never 
heard music or talk, never looked at pictures, never fished or 
played golf, never went to any play that did not promise 
jazz and girls with good legs. But one could guess that 
neither Puss nor Ruddy had ever expressed a wish for 
anything and been denied. 

Indeed, the sharpest impression that Barbara carried 
away from that first dinner was Gannet’s pride in Ruddy. 
He was so inordinately set up about him. He looked sel¬ 
dom enough at his wife, but his face turned to Ruddy’s 
time after time with a look of joyous exultation. 

“ As Anne loves me,” Barbara thought. Because Anne’s 


THE GOLD COAST 151 

love was one o£ the securities of existence. “Love un¬ 
guessed, it is. I don’t believe Ruddy knows.” 

Yet Ruddy was the essential thing in Gannet’s life. He 
had given him everything Ruddy wanted, all that he had. 
Barbara remembered his black horse at Pinelands, his ice- 
yacht, his gray racing-car. Gannet saw Barbara herself as 
something Ruddy wanted and was wooing her naively with 
hints of what he had to give. He did not pretend any 
particular interest in her personality or background. “ I’m 
a toy,” she thought, “ a clever little toy, a little dearer than 
some of the others Ruddy’s had. He wants me to please 
Ruddy . . . spend his money . . .” 

The table talk was, chiefly, of furs. Puss had just forced 
her husband to the extravagance of ermine and he was 
manoeuvering clumsily for Barbara’s preferences. But 
Barbara had no preferences in furs. She could only quote 
Anne anent marten and sable and when Ruddy’s father 
hinted jovially at moleskin she refused to talk of fur at all 
with a hint of Anne’s brusquerie. 

All the while through those swift impressions, she was 
intently aware of Ruddy, of everything he said or did, of 
his most fleeting smile, his smallest gesture. She seemed 
to be living for an hour at the heart of a rainbow in the 
midst of color and radiance, restlessly waiting for the 
moment when they were alone and Ruddy would say again 
. . . “ I want you . . . for my sweetheart and 

my wife.” It was going to happen. He would not have 
brought her there for any other reason. 

Afterward, in the living-room, she played for them; 
though they wanted music so little, Barbara decided that 
it did not matter in the least what she played. “ The prin¬ 
cess showing off her accomplishments,” she thought as she 
went to the bench before the piano. 

But it was a wonderful thing to sit before that instrument 
and the music steadied her. Her hands bit into the keys 
like a superb mechanism, moving with a flame-like swiftness 
and possessing the thing of wood and ivory and wire as if 
her spirit were one with its matter. The meditative beauty 


152 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

of the Sixth Nocturne unwound beneath her fingers, weav¬ 
ing a web of enchantment, wrapping her in meshes of lacy 
melody, shutting out the heavy sumptuous room. Every¬ 
thing retreated and it seemed as if she and Ruddy were 
back again on that high mountain-top of theirs, far above 
the earth. Through her high-keyed consciousness there 
burned the sense of his living presence. He was waiting as 
she was waiting. Presently she would go straight into his 
arms and feel them close about her and his mouth crush 
down on hers. They were to take life together ... its 
white heat of passion, its joy, its ardent tendernesses. Her 
life and Ruddy’s, blended into a thing clear and pure like 
crystal . . . 

Going home in the motor she sat quite still feeling Ruddy 
beside her as still as she. Slipping past them were the 
shadowy streets and the wide avenues where the lights of 
motors showed in strange phosphorescent gleams. Ruddy’s 
hand closed on her cold fingers. 

“ When do we take the high dive, Babs? ” he said. After 
a moment of beating silence his grasp tightened and his 
mouth sought hers. “ Babs . . . we’re bound to take 
it sometime. Aren’t we?” - 

“ Yes f ” It meant the same, whatever the words with 
which he cloaked it. It was love. 

“ It’s been a long time I’ve loved you, old girl.” 

“ Have you . . . have you loved me really, all the 

time ? ” 

“ You think any other girl could . . . mean anything 

to me, while you were my girl ? ” 

“ Oh . . . Ruddy. . . .” They spoke in low 

tones although there was no one to hear, in short phrases. 

“ Never been any girl like you. Don’t you know that? ” 

“ Yes. I know.” 

“ I bought a ring for you in Paris,” Ruddy said. “ That 
ought to tell you a thing or two . * . buyin’ a ring 

. . . in Paris , . . on leave.” 

He took out a box and opened it, holding it for her to 
see ... a square diamond set deep in a border of tiny 


THE GOLD COAST 153 

stones and platinum. When she held out her hand, he 
wished it on for her. 

“ Once for joy,” Barbara commanded breathlessly. 
“ Twist it once and wish me joy, Ruddy.” 

“ This is for joy.” 

“ I have it . . . heaped and running over. Once for 

love . . ” 

“ Love. You’ll always have that. No need 
wishin’. . . .” 

“ And once for fifty years to live. So we can celebrate 
our golden wedding. I wish I could live a hundred years 
with you, Ruddy. Anne says . . .” 

“ Listen. Don’t tell me what Anne says. When you go¬ 
ing to marry me ? ” 

“ Oh . . . June. I’ve a contract to teach.” 

“ After me waiting two years and over ? Guess again, 
Goose. Christmas.” 

“ No. Please, Ruddy. Anne can’t reach home before the 
first of the year.” 

“ Oh . . . Anne. When she comes, then. And you 

break your contract, see? June . . .” He kissed her 

suddenly on the mouth. “ What were you thinking of ? ” 

She could have told him. She had been thinking that if 
she held out for June and were stern with herself she might 
be able to pay Mark Hale the three hundred dollars she still 
owed him. Not that it really mattered. She could imagine 
Ruddy roaring over a debt of three hundred dollars. 


II 

Happiness possessed her, a deep, secret happiness which 
gave something of itself to everyone she met. She won¬ 
dered if all women experienced such joy and looked about 
her curiously on the streets, in shops and theaters, trying 
to read their faces. For months the days went by like the 
pages of a book of gladness, each parchment sheet illu¬ 
minated with rare living colors. 

Happiness, she found, had simplicity. It was as if sh$ 


154 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

woke to rapture those autumn mornings and walked with 
it through all the hours of the day. Through the hour when 
Ruddy’s flowers came and he called her on the telephone 
. . . through the later hours that she spent with him, 

playing golf or tennis, driving with him, dining with him, 
dancing with him ... to the final moment at the day’s 
end when she stood at her window and gave out to the 
night sky a wordless gratitude for the joy beyond all de¬ 
siring that was hers. 

But it was not a thing to be described. She tried talk¬ 
ing of it once or twice. To Torrey the day she went with 
him to lunch at the University Club and showed him her 
ring. 

“ Torrey, there’s no one like Ruddy. He’s the Laughing 
Cavalier, just as I named him long ago. His second name 
is laughter.” 

“ The Laughing Cavalier. H’m. There is a resemblance. 
. . . You haven’t any doubts about this, Barbara?” 

“ Doubts ? I suppose it takes some people a long time 
to find themselves ... to find what they want and if 
it’s worth having. . . .” 

“ But not you ? ” 

“ Nor Ruddy. He's never had any doubts about any¬ 
thing.” 

“ Have you written Anne ? ” 

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I write Anne?” 

Afterward, she tried talking to Ada Shurtleff. Ada 
asked the same question, bluntly. “ Have you written 
Anne?” 

“ Did you think I’d keep anything from Anne ? But no 
one else . . . none of the boys I wrote to overseas 

. . . nor Myrrh, even . . . nor Mark Hale. Anne, 

you and Torrey, and Ruddy’s people. You’re the only 
ones.” 

“ You ought to write Mark Hale, I think.” 

“ Heavens, why? Ham and Dreka McLaurin, too, I sup¬ 
pose. And Geoffrey.” 

“ Geoffrey? ” 


155 


THE GOLD COAST 

" Geoffrey Hale. I wrote him regularly through the 
war. He’s a different sort from Mark . . . hard as 
nails. Oh, I wrote Anne. But ... of course, Anne’s 
rushed to death. Do you suppose she’s ever thought of love 
as laughter and tenderness and pride all mixed together ? ” 

“ Love is the flame of life,” Ada Shurtleff said didactic¬ 
ally. “If Anne thinks of it at all, she thinks of it as a 
necessity of the race.” 

It was all so unsatisfactory. Barbara felt impatient and 
constrained as if she had taken a gleaming jewel from its 
hiding-place and saw it dull in Mrs. Shurtleff’s hand, lose 
its sparkle. But it was still more unsatisfactory to try talk¬ 
ing to Ruddy. He was not the sort to share contradictory 
moods, delicate impulses. His life ran smoothly in the 
pleasantest possible places . . . and ran very fast with¬ 

out the time for either speculation or reminiscence. 
Barbara, to whom love was fire and spirit and no matter at 
all of flesh, turned shy sometimes at his ardors, the easy 
inevitability of his arm across her shoulders, his hot kisses 
that swallowed her up . . . but Ruddy did not under¬ 

stand shyness. They were being swept along together on a 
high pressure happiness that was as nearly like swinging 
through the upper air in a powerful aeroplane as anything 
Barbara could imagine. Her days were radiant with a clear 
sunshine that Ruddy never saw. 

She was with the Gannet family a great deal, at their 
apartment or about town in the smart restaurants where 
Gannet was always taking them for dinner. He liked 
Barbara. Lounging over the table he talked to her almost 
exclusively . . . about his poker winnings, about the 

wines he drank and the prices he paid for them, about 
horses on which he laid his bets, about women. He never 
touched on the intricacies of business but, strangely enough 
the only place where she found him impressive was against 
the background of the business into which he was initiating 
Ruddy and which he carried on in a magnificent suite of 
offices, high above Michigan Avenue. 

On the whole the elder Gannet rather bored her and she 


156 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

could imagine him intolerable at times as a father-in-law, 
but she liked the luxury of his way of life. She liked the 
soundless, swift-moving limousine in which she rode with 
Puss, the expensive candies he bought for her, the high- 
priced seats at the theater, the impressive tips, the crowds 
and sumptuousness of the hotels he frequented. It was 
only that none of it ever seemed quite real. She seemed 
not herself, not the girl ordinarily part of the crowd on the 
sidewalks, taking snatches of pleasure without the accom¬ 
paniment of luxury, making happiness out of nothing that 
was material; but different, a syncopated self that delighted 
in lights and jazz and clamor. . . . 

It was a world of superfluities . . . too much food, 
too many furnishings everywhere, too rich an array of 
jewels and furs and silks, of amusements, and excitements 
and passions . . . and for all its excess, a world in 

which the Gannets lived a curiously formless and detached 
existence among kaleidoscopic groups of acquaintances, too 
superficial to be called friends. Puss Gannet was even un¬ 
certain about the names of the women with whom she 
played bridge at big charity affairs . . . women 

like herself, blurred into a mass against that anomalous 
background, with heavy, soft-fleshed faces and plucked 
eyebrows that gave them a thoroughly bewildered expres¬ 
sion. 

It was, sometimes, a relief to get back to Ada Shurtleff’s 
pretty, unpretentious house and pass sandwiches to ’ 94 . 

One Sunday night at the Marigold Gardens they ran 
across Garsh. He left the table where he was dining and 
came to Barbara. 

“To tell you of a liddle luck, ,, he said. He was being 
taken into partnership with a New York producer, had just 
purchased a " show-shop ” in the Loop. A bit of the uproad 
was behind him. He stood back, smiling, expectant. 

“ I’m so glad,” she cried and gave him both her hands. 
" Oh, I am glad, Johnny Garsh.” 

Then she noticed Puss Gannett face. And Ruddy stood 
up loweringly and began to gather her wraps together. He 


THE GOLD COAST 157 

did it hurriedly, insistently. He shook his head when she 
turned to introduce them. 

“ Don’t bother,” he said in her ear. “ Don’t.” 

Puss passed Garsh with a quite expressionless face and 
Barbara stopped for five minutes, talking deliberately. 

“ Because he really is somebody, you know,” she apolo¬ 
gized to Mrs. Gannet with a touch of cool malice. “ A 
real person.” 

“A Jew?” 

“And lucky . . . with money. He has heaps of 

money.” 

Puss Gannet’s voice changed imperceptibly. “ Really? I 
didn’t know that. I thought he was an actor.” 

That was one of the times when she wanted to get away 
from Gannet’s world. Sunday night. She hoped that ’94 
would be at Shurtleffs’ in force. What she had not hoped 
for, had not even guessed was that she would find Anne 
there, in the corner of the davenport, looking oddly thin 
and weary, her happy face lifted above the French military 
uniform that she had been authorized officially to wear. 

She sat quietly, her fingers touching Anne’s arm. ’94 
was talking . . . thin intelligent faces and an excited 

jumble of voices tumbling through the room . . . 

politics, the spring election, the economic consequences of 
peace. 


X 


ANNE 

I 

“ Barbara.” 

“ Just a minute, Anne-dear.” 

She stood at the top of the stairs at St. Agatha’s, listen¬ 
ing to the echo of Ruddy’s steps two flights below. He had 
brought her home from the theater but he had not come in. 
Anne’s curt nod had stopped them on the threshold and 
while they lingered for five minutes in the upper hall, 
Barbara had been uncomfortably aware of the sound of 
restless pacing in the room behind her. Anne was probably 
in for one of her bad headaches and impatient at Ruddy’s 
delay. Herself, she urged his going, lifting her mouth for 
a hurried kiss, drawing her hands away from his. 

“ Barbara.” 

She turned with a sharp uneasiness. Anne was standing 
by her desk, erect and still. Her hands moved rapidly over 
some papers and her eyes were narrowed as if she already 
felt the stinging pain at her temples. 

“ Come in and close the door.” 

“ You’re not ill, dear?” 

“ No. I’ve . . . I’ve something to say to you.” 

“ Money, is it, Anne ? I haven’t overdrawn again, have 
I?” She went past Anne to the dormer, unpinning the 
corsage of violets that Ruddy had brought her. The flow¬ 
ers were crushed but they still were fragrant and cool 
against her lips. “ Hard to keep track just now when I 
need so much.” 

“ I wish it were.” 

“ Anne. How . . . funny.” 

“ It’s this Dirck Gannet.” 


ANNE 159 

“ You don’t like him, I know,” Barbara said with an icy 
patience. The jealousy between Anne and Ruddy was ab¬ 
surd. Neither of them permitted her to love the other in 
peace; but Anne was the older. Anne, she thought, might 
have exercised some self-control. 

“ There is,” Anne began awkwardly after a moment, “ no 
use in blinking facts. My liking or not liking him has noth¬ 
ing to do with facts.” 

“ Ruddy has his faults, of course. I know what they 
are.” 

“ Do you?” 

“ I ought to, after five years. I wish you could feel dif¬ 
ferently, Anne. He really isn’t a bad sort.” 

“ He’s not the sort for you.” 

“ There’s no use your talking to me about Ruddy, Anne,” 
she said stubbornly. “If you talked a thousand years you 
couldn’t make me blink the fact that Ruddy loves 
me. . . .” 

“ But he loves himself more.” 

Barbara laughed a little, helplessly. “ Oh, Anne. I ex¬ 
pect most men love themselves more.” 

“ Some men,” Anne conceded. “ Not the men who make 
women happy.” 

“ I couldn’t help being happy with Ruddy,” Barbara said 
steadily. “ I’ll be happy.” 

“ No,” Anne contradicted in a harsh voice. “ You’ll never 
know what happiness is like. Disillusionment, bitterness 
. . . you’ve no idea. But never happiness.” 

She stopped with a helpless shrug of her shoulders and 
sat, frowning darkly at Barbara. There was something 
shocking in the contrast of her iron voice and her shaking 
hands lying in her lap, wrung with tiny quiverings. 

“ Happy,” Barbara insisted. “If you’d ever been in 
love . . .” 

“ But I have been in love.” Her voice rose penetratingly. 
“ You’re old enough to know it. I was in love with your 
father, Barbara . . . with Jim. It began when I was 

eighteen. You can’t tell me anything about love. . . .” 


160 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ Didn't he . . . care, too ? ” 

“ Yes. He loved me. I know in my soul that he loved 
me.” Her voice had dropped to a curiously passionless 
level. “ I've never doubted it since he sent you here for 
me to bring up, after . . . after Evelyn left him. Of 

course, it all happened a long time ago. . . . They’re 

both dead. But you’re old enough to know. Jim did love 
me . . . but he loved himself more. It was a ques¬ 

tion of money, really. Jim was the sort who should have 
been born rich. He needed money, a lot of it . . . 

to spend. Extravagant . . . and nothing very bad, 

not one thing that in itself ought to have wrecked him. 
A little drinking . . . the town was wide open then 
. . . expensive little habits, a little gambling. And then, 
when he’d had a run of bad luck, lies . . . because, he 

said, he loved me and didn’t want to hurt me. As if lies 
didn’t hurt a woman. 

“ And there was always debt. Always and forever, debt. 
When we graduated, when I was first engaged to him, I’d 
said I would marry him when he was out of debt. It 
wasn’t that I wanted . . . money; only not debt, to 
start with. He was a brilliant man, Barbara. He made 
his mark early. I was so proud of loving him.” 

“ He was in ’94, wasn’t he ? ” 

“Yes. But this was afterward, the spring we were 
going to be married. I had all my things and Evelyn came 
on to be my bridesmaid as we’d planned when we were 
tiny snips.” 

“ Mother, you mean.” 

“ Yes. And then . . . after everything was ready 
. . . it came out that Jim had lost a lot of money. 
Roulette, it was. As I said the town was wide open. He 
lost all he had and all his brother had and a trust fund. 
Nobody ever knew. It would have been a serious thing if 
it had come out. But Torrey . . . Torrey helped him ; 

and I had been saving money the four years I’d been teach¬ 
ing. It wasn’t that he was bad, Barbara. Just weak and 
* ♦ . young. But I couldn’t marry him, , , 


ANNE 


161 


“ Evelyn married him.” 

The hard look tugged savagely at the comers of Anne’s 
mouth. “ A month,” she said, “ from the day I broke with 
him, in my father’s parlor. She wore Grandmother’s lace 
wedding veil. Of course, she had the right to wear it as 
much ... as much as I.” 

Odd how quickly the picture formed in Barbara’s mind. 
She thought of Evelyn, a piquant golden little bride, under 
the cobwebby lace. And Anne, quite calm, quite frozen, 
going about saying nothing. 

“Why didn’t you tell her? Why didn’t your father tell 
her?” 

“ He didn’t know. And I thought I was too proud. I 
thought it would be dishonorable. I thought if Jim had 
learned to love her and taught her to love him all in a 
month like that I’d best hold my tongue. She did love him. 
And she lived through four of the bitterest years. . . . 

That is why I’m going to tell you, beforehand. I’m going 
to ... to hurt you, Barbara.” 

Behind the unconcern of her smile, Barbara kept her 
voice to the evenness of Anne’s. 

“ Something you’ve dug up in Ruddy’s poor old past ? ” 

“ His present,” Anne said. “ It’s a woman.” 

The strange thing was that she wrung her hands. She 
struck, coldly and deliberately, and then she wrung her 
hands as if she were in crushing pain. Barbara felt that if 
any hands were wrung, they might have been hers. But 
hers were lying quietly in her lap holding Ruddy’s violets. 

And except for a little ache in her throat, she felt noth¬ 
ing at all. She struggled with the terrible sense of being 
in a strange place. The room had changed. She had never 
seen the Chesterfield nor the woman in that familiar white 
hospital uniform, sitting in its corner. A controlled, harsh 
voice went on and on. She listened perforce, hardly mind¬ 
ing, recognizing only that every sentence was like a blow 
. . . a long succession of light pattering blows, falling 

insistently. Bastinado. A curious torture. 

“ I’ve known of several things, but I was never sure be- 


162 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

fore. This time I’m sure. Marian Gray came on this and 
she was sure before she told me. This woman was a pa¬ 
tient of Marian’s several years ago. This winter she moved 
into an apartment across the street and called her again. 
He . . . he’s been there constantly. She knows he ex¬ 

pects to be married in a month but she doesn’t intend to 
let him go. There is no hint that he wants her to let him 
go ... or expects it. He was there last night. He’s 
a good goose to pluck and she’ll make trouble before she 
lets him get away. Not that trouble matters. One could 
face any trouble if one believed in a man . . . believed, 

I mean, in his integrity. . . . 

“ I know this because I went to see her. She’s older than 
you, older even than he, I think, a small, vivacious person 
with a kind of caustic cleverness. While I was there, he 
called her up. He’d gone out between acts, he said, to call 
her. She made arrangements to meet him at Balri’s at 
twelve. She told me so, quite coolly, because, she said, she 
wanted to dress. You’ll have to believe what I’m telling 
you. I’ve never lied to you, Barbara. . . .” 

Barbara cried out in a thin, hysterical gasp and the blows 
stopped. “ I hate her. I hate her,” she thought and sat 
on, quiet as a stone image, shocked at the passion of anger 
that was in her. She hated Anne with her cold, even voice. 

“ You’ve never liked him.” 

“ My liking him makes no difference, I tell you.” 

“ You’re not fair. You’re cruel. You’re jealous.” 

“ Barbara. I can’t risk . . . misery for you.” 

“ Do you think what you’ve said makes any difference to 
me? I can find out for myself.” 

“ Yes,” Anne said. “Yes . . . you’ve always done 

that. And I’ll have to stand by.” There was a sick flutter 
on Anne’s hand against her knee. Barbara looked back 
and saw it as she went through the door. 

She stumbled through the corridor and into her own 
room; and in the dark, she flung herself across her bed 
burying her face in her arms. Her mind seemed empty, 
incapable of thought, incapable of feeling anything but the 


163 


ANNE 

old sense of sickening pain. The truth which was Anne’s 
sturdy habit ringed her like a walled circle in which she 
paced, trapped. Whichever way she turned she found that 
blank wall. Anne had never lied to her. 

She wanted to disbelieve Anne and find, in any pretense, 
an avenue of escape back to her staunch faith in Ruddy. 
There came into her mind the memory of an incident of 
early winter when she had not seen Ruddy for three days. 
Ruddy had happened to mention casually that he had taken 
a girl he knew to lunch. 

Barbara released an unconscious sigh. “ I’m glad you 
told me. You’re rather a dear, Ruddy.” 

“Are you? Why?” 

“Because Doctor Gray, that friend of Anne’s, saw you; 
and she made a point of telling me to-day at Field’s.” 

“ Rather went out of her way, didn’t she? . . . mak¬ 

ing trouble ? ” Barbara saw a hot flush go up his face. 
“ I just happened to meet this girl. I’m glad I thought 
of mentioning it. It might have gone out of my head alto¬ 
gether, it was that unimportant to me.” 

“ It isn’t important. But I’m glad you told me. It makes 
me believe in you.” 

Ruddy’s face darkened. “ You mean, after all this time, 
you might disbelieve in me, because appearances for a mo¬ 
ment were against me?” 

“ No. I didn’t mean that. I’d believe you against all the 
world, Ruddy.” 

“ Against Anne Linton ? ” 

“ I’d believe you.” 

Now it came back with the force of a promise. “ I’d 
believe you ” Even against Anne. Yet Anne had waited 
to make sure before she spoke. Anne wouldn’t have lied. 
It was the not knowing that was intolerable . . . easier 

to face any certainty than this nebulous fear. “ I must find 
out for myself,” Barbara whispered in the dark. “ I shall 
have to find out for myself. . . .” 

She relaxed a little and lay listening until she heard Anne 
in her own room. Then she opened the door swiftly and 


164 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

noiselessly, caught up her hat and coat from the dormer 
seat where she had flung them and fled down the stairs 
thrusting them on as she ran. She reached the vestibule 
without passing anyone and slipped around the corner of 
the dark yard into the next street. It was a mild night in 
March with a soft, damp wind, and a faint mist settling 
between the houses. 

Balri’s, at twelve. The woman had given Anne the time 
and place with a directness that was like a cunning chal¬ 
lenge. As if she invited her to do what Barbara was do¬ 
ing . . . find out for herself. Balri’s was on a side 

street and a single lamp in a wrought iron frame burned 
at the door. Casement windows stretched across the front 
of the building and Barbara could hear an orchestra play¬ 
ing and the muffled beat of feet on the measure. Ruddy 
would be dancing . . . 

She shrank into a doorway opposite, wondering what it 
was she meant to do. She could not go into Balri’s, cer¬ 
tainly. She was alone and it was already long past mid¬ 
night. She could hardly stand and peer into the windows. 
She had no wish to meet Ruddy, no idea, indeed, what she 
should do if she came on him face to face. She dreaded 
the possibility of a scene. Her only quest was certainty. 
A policeman passed and she slipped out of the doorway and 
down the block, crossing to the other side. She gave 
herself till one. “ If they don’t come out by one, I can 
believe that the woman lied to Anne. I’ll take it as an 
omen.” 

She managed so that she met no one. She slipped into a 
doorway now and then or a shadowy nook between two 
buildings, staying in hiding until the approaching footsteps 
passed, and she could slip out with a casual air, to walk 
briskly to the corner. Much of the time, while the short 
street was empty, she dawdled along, keeping in the heavy 
shadows of the dark buildings. She was not afraid. Anne 
traversed the city at any time of night and Barbara herself 
had been used to leaving the Princess toward midnight and 
going equably home. She wasn’t afraid. Of nothing, that 


ANNE 165 

is, but of meeting someone who might recognize her and 
more than that of finding herself face to face with Ruddy. 
She could imagine the moment: Ruddy looking down at her 
slantwise and she, with no explanation that would satisfy 
either of them, looking up, dumbly, at him. Intolerable. 

Yet she had no thought of leaving. There was no 
moment in that hour when the doorway of the restaurant, 
dim under its lanterned light, was out of her sight. She 
slipped around a corner, walked a yard or so and turned 
back, edging through the shadows to the other end of the 
block, slipping past it, returning. When she heard the 
clocks strike once, she drew a long breath. Joy began to 
stir deep beneath the poignancy of her fears. If he had not 
come by one she was to take it as a sign that she could 
believe in him forever. And it was one, now ... a 
minute or two past. 

It was something of a shock that, just then, Ruddy came. 
Barbara was at the doorway exactly opposite Balri’s and 
she saw him come out, standing a moment under the lantern 
to shake himself into his coat. There was a woman with 
him, a little thing. Her head in its gold turban came not 
far above his elbow. He had to bend when he spoke to 
her; and as they strolled away he slipped one arm about her 
and lifted her up and down the curbs as he would a child. 
They did not take a taxi. They walked, slowly, turning 
toward each other as they talked . . . and Barbara fol¬ 

lowed, hesitatingly, in an agony of apprehension a half¬ 
block behind. She was afraid that Ruddy would look back 
and find her spying. There was no other name for it, of 
course. You had to call it that. She felt certain that the 
woman was watching, turning her head with quick bird¬ 
like movements when they crossed a corner under an arc- 
light. Their shadows blotted black around their feet and 
then grew long before them as they moved away. 

“ He may just have met her. He may just be walking 
to the comer with her,” Barbara thought. “ If he leaves 
her, I'll know it’s all right. I'll be sure. . . .” Be¬ 

cause it was nothing, surely, for Ruddy to take a friend to 


166 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

lunch or supper. It was nothing. Even after they were 
married he would do that. Anne had the rigid prejudices 
of a Victorian age; and besides the woman might have 
been lying, boasting. Anne’s unvoiced horror might have 
made her defiant. If Ruddy left her at the corner . . . 

it was an accidental meeting. . . . 

They turned the corner and went down the block. It was 
the place of which Anne had told her, across from Doctor 
Gray’s apartment, a great building looming shadowy in the 
night, having only an occasional lighted window. For a 
little while the two stood in the gloom of the doorway, 
their faces close. 

“ Of course, he couldn’t leave her on a corner,” Barbara 
whispered scornfully to herself. “ He’ll unlock the door 
for her as he does for me.” A promise is a promise and 
she had promised Ruddy to believe. “And I will. If he 
unlocks the door and comes away, I shall know Anne was 
mistaken. . . .” But just then he went in, following the 

tiny gold-turbaned figure past the door. 

Barbara stopped short, backing a step or two into the 
black circle of a tree that grew at the comer of the city 
square opposite, bracing herself against its trunk. It was a 
quiet corner. No one passed. Cars went by now and then 
on an avenue a block away, their commonplace lighted win¬ 
dows curiously comforting. She stood stiffly, under the 
spread of leafless branches, her fingers picking aimlessly at 
the bark of the tree . . . heavy coarse bark . . . 

an old tree ... a tree that had seen many things. 

“If he comes soon . . . If he comes in an hour, I 

can make myself believe. I can. Because he might have 
had to go in for politeness. And he never would think of 
the time. If he comes in an hour, I’ll never even mention 
this. I’ll fight it out with Anne alone.” 

She settled herself to wait. What seemed a long time 
passed, but she was not sure. Did it seem so long merely 
because she was chilly and impatient ? Better to wait a little 
longer and be fair. The night wind grew colder. Her 
fingers were numb and she rubbed them back and forth 


ANNE 167 

against the rough bark and against each other to bring back 
feeling. Thoughts drifted through her mind. 

“ Why do I pretend I haven't known about Ruddy ? It 
is pretending. I’ve always known. . . . Then why does 

this matter so much ? I could go on pretending, couldn’t I ? 
I could be married to him and pretend I believed in him. 
It hurts so horribly not to believe in him. I’ve got to believe 
. . . at least I must be able to pretend I believe. If a 

woman loved a man enough, however unworthy he was, 
however faithless, couldn’t she pretend to herself she 
believed? But then all one’s life . . . fifty years, 
perhaps ... of pretending ? ” And suppose one 
couldn’t pretend. Suppose something cold and austere in 
one’s self held against pretense. It seemed as if the night 
chill had become a part of herself, a relentless logic that 
forced her to lift the draperies from the clay feet of her 
idol. If she once yielded to that cold reasoning, she would 
never be able to pretend again. . . . 

She began whimpering a little, suddenly, one hand cupped 
hard over her mouth. “ Oh, God, please. Please. God 
. . . God. . . Oh, give that up. Hysteria, no 

less. 

If the clocks had tolled the hour she had not heard them. 
She had lost all sense of time. There was still one lighted 
window in the formless bulk of shadow . . . her win¬ 

dow, perhaps. Why not depend on that window? If Ruddy 
came before that light went out, she could forget all this 
and begin again. In her secret heart she would make her¬ 
self believe that he had never been unfaithful even in 
thought. A deep stubborn loyalty came to her, rushing to 
do battle with the cold logic that was carrying her into 
doubt and disbelief. She tried stupidly to piece together 
ideas that would mean something. . . . But she was 
waiting an interminable time. She would have to be pa¬ 
tient, of course. Everything depended on her patience. If, 
before the light went put . . . 

She looked up quickly and saw that the light had gone. 
She could not even make out what window it had been. 


168 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


She heard one open somewhere above her and the sharp 
wail of a baby. 

But even then she did not move. She stood listlessly, 
fitting her finger-tips into the creases of the mark, wonder¬ 
ing what she was going to do. About her the darkness 
thinned imperceptibly. The stark branches of the tree 
above her were smudged against a sky of blackish gray. 
Far off, across the city, she heard a church bell striking 
and her fingers tapped on the tree, following the sound, 
making sure. Once . . . twice . . . her fingers 

tapped the bark five times. 


II 

From the south dormer she saw Ruddy stop his car at 
the curb and walk up the stone path, lifting his face to that 
row of windows in the mansard roof; and sitting motion¬ 
less behind the curtain, she listened for the wheeze of the 
bell ... a short, a long, two short . . . Ruddy’s 

ring. It seemed a long way to the hall where she touched 
the spring that opened the vestibule door below and the 
next moment, when she thought she heard him mounting 
the stairs, she turned and fled through the corridor into her 
bedroom, shutting the door softly behind her. She was 
shaking and her fingers pressed against her eyes were icy- 
cold. 

Yet she was prepared for this meeting. Hours before, 
when she had left the friendly tree and started to walk 
slowly back to St. Agatha’s along the empty silent streets, 
she had known it was ahead of her. She took the five 
miles with a long stride, blindly. She had fixed her eyes 
above and beyond the way she went and walked with her 
thoughts. At home, Anne’s startled face peering at her 
from a dusky doorway and soundless queries shaping on 
Anne’s lips had brought her to a standstill. Out of a vague 
unhappy sense of doing justice to Anne she had said, “ You 
were . . . quite right. It was . . . true, all you 

said. I have to tell you that it was true.” 

A croak sounded in Anne’s throat but Barbara had not 


ANNE 169 

waited. She shut her door and lay down on the bed watch¬ 
ing the gray light creep over the roofs. Lying there in that 
early March dawn she saw Ruddy with a new sharpness, 
with a clear prescience of what life with him would meah. 
Intervals of passionate joy . . . oh, yes. But very 

brief intervals . . . and a long time of pain. She could 

not hold him. No woman of herself ever had the power 
to hold a man. Only his own loyalty did that. And, even 
though he loved her, Ruddy had no loyalty. He would 
never be able to deliver himself from the tyranny of 
women’s bodies. He did not want to ... he was a 
vagrant in love. . . . 

Through the quiet, she heard the door open and his voice 
calling, “ Barbara.” He was already in the living-room 
beyond the barrier of her threshold. She felt like a person 
trapped. She pressed her cold hands over her eyes and 
tried desperately to think what she had to say to him. 
After she had spoken nothing would matter . . . but 

she would have to say whatever came to her tongue first if 
she went out. And she would have to go out. “ Barbara,” 
Ruddy was calling, and to himself he said, “ Funny . . .” 

Her terror left her suddenly. She straightened her shoul¬ 
ders and put up her head. She was breathing irregularly 
and her temples throbbed but she was not afraid. 

Ill 

It seemed to her that Ruddy had gathered up all the 
light and color in the room and stood holding it in his arms. 
He looked, Barbara thought, like a young red-gold Viking 
in mufti, standing there inside the door, his hat flung on 
the chair behind him and a cluster of crimson roses in his 
hand. As she came slowly from the corridor, she caught 
the glow of pleasure that flared in his face. “ I like brown 
eyes with gold lights in them,” he said. “ What’s the news, 
Babs?” 

She shook her head, not speaking. As he came toward 
her, she took an involuntary step away from him and an¬ 
other and another. Her movement changed their positions, 


170 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

put the square table between them. Ruddy looked puz¬ 
zled. His reckless mouth was tilted in a smile but the mirth 
went out of his eyes. 

“ Ill, Honey? You’re as white as your own dear ghost.” 

Again she shook her head. In the dreadful silence she 
dropped the ring he had given her upon the table. It rolled 
a little and lay sparkling in the thin spring sunlight on the 
polished wood. Blank amazement came into Ruddy’s face 
and through the silence they measured one another. Then 
his eyes went back to the glittering bauble between them 
and he spoke harshly. 

“What’s it mean, Babs? Don’t look like that. Can’t 
you talk ? ” 

“ I seem to find it . . . difficult,” she said so rue¬ 

fully that Ruddy laughed with relief. He took up the ring 
and turned it, looking at it. 

“ Like to lose me a year’s growth. What’s wrong ? 
Stones come loose ? ” 

“ No. You . . . you see the wishes can’t come 

true.” 

“ What d’you mean . . . wishes ? ” 

“ The wish for joy and the wish for love. But I am ter¬ 
ribly afraid the other will . . . the fifty years. I’m 

giving it back, Ruddy.” 

“ Giving it back ? But you can’t give it back.” He was 
angry already, his blue eyes blazing as if something about 
her white, shadowed face lashed him to fury. “ I sha’n’t 
take it.” 

“ You can’t help yourself.” She sat down stiffly in the 
nearest place which happened to be the south dormer. 
“ We’ll have to thrash this out, I’m afraid, Ruddy.” 

“ I should think so. Last night everything gorgeously 
right; this morning a row. What’s the big idea ? I haven’t 
a notion.” 

“ Haven’t you, Ruddy ? Really ? ” 

“ Not a glimmer.” 

She shook her head at that a little sadly. “ It must have 
happened, then, so many, many times.” 


ANNE ±< 

“Barbara. . . ." He came across the room to her 
and put his hands about her arms, drawing her up. 
Through her thin sleeve she felt the touch of each finger¬ 
tip, warm against her flesh, like a separate caress. “ Oh 
... he knows how to hold a woman,” she thought and 
remembered how he had lifted that other woman up and 
down the curbs. When he bent to brush his lips across her 
cheek a small smile touched a corner of her mouth. 

“ That's no good, Ruddy." 

“ Hush," he commanded. “ We’ve hardly had a quarrel 
these five years. It’s silly to begin now." 

“ It isn’t the beginning," Barbara said softly. “ It’s the 
end." 

“ Have you gone crazy ? ” He stepped back, thrusting 
his hands deep into his pockets. “ You’re in love with me. 
Now . . . this minute. You know you are." 

“ Yes." 

“ Well, then. And you know I love you. More than 
all the rest of the world together." 

“ Please." She stopped him with a swift look. “ I can’t 
bear that, Ruddy." 

“ This . . . all of it, this talking about its being 
the end and all. It’s nonsense. If we love each other. 
Love’s all that matters.” 

“ Yesterday I’d have said that. Funny. I’d have said 
that if we loved each other it was enough. I’d have 
said nothing could make any difference. All this time, no 
matter what happened, no matter how far you went away 
or what doubts came, I believed in my heart that things 
would come right because we loved each other. Because 
I could pretend . . . that it was perfect. . . .” 

“ You don’t think I’ve stopped loving you, do you? Since 
last night ? ’’ 

“ No. I honestly think as much as you love any woman 
you love me. . . .” 

" Any woman. . . .” 

“ But I don’t . . . want your kind of love." 

Her defiance leaped at him in that still whisper and his 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

anger flamed again. “ See here, Babs. Come to the point. 
Come across . . . straight goods. I want a decent ex¬ 

planation, that’s what I want. Suppose you tell me what 
you’re driving at.” 

“ All right,” she said, softly. “ I was hoping I needn’t 
. . . I can put all I’m driving at into one street number. 

Twenty-two Williams Place.” 

If only he had not lied . . . hadn’t gone stumbling 

about the room, kicking at the rugs and lying, as if lies 
were all he had to give her, all he had ever given her. 
Worse than the thing he had done were those denials 
of it . . . his clear determination to go on and marry 

her with that living lie between them. He admitted 
knowing a woman in Williams Place. “ And I can explain 
about her. She’s no claim on me. She . . .” 

“ Don’t,” she cried breathlessly. “ Don’t tell me. 
Please. . . . Not even her name. I stood outside her 

door, after you’d gone in and waited . . . till five 

o’clock.” 

The silence lengthened. Ruddy straightened and stood 
still, looking down at her. Barbara felt that many women 
must have loved him. His very gestures, his glances were 
relics of affairs. She thought of his relation with those 
other women as the essential thing in his life beside which 
her own joyous young passion was not quite real. It seemed 
as if their days together, their escapades, their gladness had 
retreated into the past, things that happened so long ago 
they were already dim in her memory. Love. . . .It 

had been rather like a huge bonfire that she had piled high 
with all she had of laughter and tenderness and pride 
. . . that had burned itself out. . . . 

“ Funny you’d kick up a shindy over this,” Ruddy said 
at last with a smile that seemed to Barbara sheer bravado. 
On the floor below a door slammed and the sound came up 
to them echoing in the stillness. “ When you’ve swallowed 
worse and never said a word.” 

“ Worse?” 

“If you’d married me that day I asked you, three years 


ANNE 


173 


ago/’ he explained in a hard reproach, “ things would have 
been different. My God. Everything would have been dif¬ 
ferent. It was that started the Jane Treves mess. That’s 
what I mean. You knew about that” His eyes grew wide 
with alarm at the expression on her face. “ You did know 
about Jane Treves. Barbara . . . didn’t you?” 

“ Oh, Ruddy,” she groaned. “ Oh, Ruddy . . . 
Ruddy. . . .” 

For a sense of her own certainty overwhelmed her. Frag¬ 
ments pieced themselves together in her mind, explaining 
what she had not guessed . . . the name of the town, 
the leer fastened on the face of the man who was Jane’s 
brother, the trouble in the eyes of John Garsh when he 
stood on the threshold of that room, Ruddy’s letter telling 
her he had gone . . . and her choked cry was one of 

pity for what had been and what might have been. 

Ruddy heard it and came close to her. He did not touch 
her. He only stood, muscles taut, possessed now by a 
brutal honesty. She listened to what he told her with a 
detachment, cool and mature. She understood all that he 
said. 

“ But you wouldn’t marry her.” 

“ That kind of a girl ? Besides how did I know it wasn’t 
a game? She was there two days before she sprung it. 
. . . You aren’t making this very easy for me, are you, 

Babs?” 

“ I’m not trying to make it hard,” she answered gently. 

“ Babs . . . I’m going to be good to you. All your 

life. This is the last time a thing like this can ever happen. 
Don’t you believe it ? I’ve always come back to you, what- 
ever’s happened. You don’t believe I’d ever hurt you again 
. . . like this?” 

She made a little gesture, her hands creeping to her 
throat. “ Oh, Ruddy ... I’d give twenty years of my 
life to believe that. To believe that this was the last time. 
I want to. But I can’t. I’m not the woman to play the 
part you’re giving me. I’d try not to see the trifles accumu¬ 
lating against me, but I would. Little by little, they’d come 


174 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


plain. Things would happen . . . things I’d recognize 

now and understand . . . things I couldn’t help under¬ 
standing. There’s the first faint suspicion . . . and the 

doubt; and then the fear stabbing through you and that sick 
jealousy; and after that the feeling that one must know , 
that anything is better than to endure what one is enduring. 
We’d quarrel. Then we’d make up the quarrel and I’d 
force myself to believe again ... to pretend that I be¬ 
lieved, because I wanted so to believe. And the next 
time . . .” 

“ There’ll never be a next time, Barbara.” 

“ I can’t do it. A man loses the power of being faithful. 
I don’t love you enough to pretend. . . 

That closed the gates. He stood a moment thwarted, 
impotent, his eyes meeting hers vaguely and his hands 
clenched still as if against some unrecognized enemy. 
Through the mist that swam before her eyes, Barbara saw 
him recede the length of the room and pick up his hat 
from the chair beside the door. She even smiled at him 
once before he went out. 


XI 


TOWER-TOWN 

I 

There were nights when she started broad awake, feel¬ 
ing his lips on hers. And such nights she would lie a long 
time reliving hours that they had shared, recalling tiny 
things so remote that she thought she had forgotten them 
utterly, facing deliberately the certainty that they had loved 
each other; and that other equal certainty that she had 
opened the door of her house of life and shut it after him. 
Between those nights, the days went on. There was the 
day, for instance, when she saw Torrey and thought that 
he knew, that he must know, just as he had known all those 
years about her father. There was the day when she met 
Doctor Gray unavoidably in the vestibule at Field’s and the 
day when she read in her morning paper that Dirck Gannet 
was sailing with his mother for Japan. There was a day 
in April that was to have been her wedding day. 

Gradually, Barbara acquired a sense of her reactions to 
the break with Ruddy. She had changed and she tried to 
think of herself with detachment and understand what the 
change was. She was curiously hard with a half-scornful, 
half-amused indifference masking something neither amused 
nor scornful ... a sensitiveness to pain that baffled 
her intelligence and frayed her nerves. She felt an almost 
intolerable compassion for those who suffered physically 
. . . still figures borne through the corridors, the deso¬ 

late humble groups gathering before the closed door of the 
dispensary in the early afternoon, children lying in harnesses 
on high, narrow beds, women in labor crying out in the 
night. 

“ Pain of one sort or another seems to be the price one 


176 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

pays for living,” she said to Anne dryly, “ and far too 
high a price, don’t you think? Life really can't be worth 
it.” 

They had not mentioned again the abrupt confidence that 
Anne had given as the proof of her right to speak out nor 
Jim Fallows; but here, significantly, Anne startled Barbara 
by speaking of Ruddy. 

“ Oh ... I wanted too much from him,” Barbara 
said lightly. “ It’s no good caring too much. I wanted him 
all mine. I didn’t realize that men don’t love women that 
way . . .” 

“ Some do,” Anne averred obstinately. 

“. . . but only spasmodically for a little while at a 

time,” Barbara went on as if she had not spoken. She felt 
infinitely older and more sophisticated than Anne. Anne 
Linton was of the aesthetic, altruistic Nineties, imbued by a 
trustful Victorianism; and Barbara Fallows was of the 
generation taught by the sufferings of war to accept casually 
any harsh reality. “ I might better have taken him as he 
was, I expect, and endured what pain went with the tak¬ 
ing. I don’t seem to have gained much letting him go. I 
made a high and mighty gesture and it’s come to nothing.” 

“ Has it? You wouldn’t take him back? ” 

“ I . . . couldn’t, I’m afraid.” She did not add that 

it was not so much this latest unknown mistress as Jane 
Treves who made it impossible. “ I don’t know why, ex¬ 
actly. Something in me . . . and yet other women ac¬ 

cept that sort of thing and make the best of it.” 

“ Jelly-fish women,” said Anne. “ The sort of women 
who cannot bear the truth. Most women are given to the 
habit of self-deception and excuse.” 

Barbara looked at her with a little flicker of scorn. 
These quaint simplicities! These inflexible standards! 
How could one talk to a person who solved problems as 
easily as that? Anne was never inconsistent, never, ap¬ 
parently, tormented by uncertainties. She saw wrong as 
dead black separated by a sharp, straight line of demarca¬ 
tion from the white which necessarily represented trium- 


TOWER-TOWN 177 

phant virtue. There was never a wavering blurred field of 
gray where the two mingled. 

“ But perhaps they love their men enough to pretend. 
That they’re perfect, I mean. Isn’t it a question of loving 
enough ? ” 

“ Surely if the modern woman stands for anything,” 
Anne said impatiently, “ she stands for equality in morality. 
He wouldn’t have taken you.” 

Which was true. (“That kind of a girl?” Ruddy had 
asked with an edge in his voice that she had never heard 
before.) She had an instant’s vivid imagining of the situa¬ 
tion turned inside out, as if she looked through a narrow 
door and saw herself at Ruddy’s feet . . . begging. 

An intolerable moment. Something in her lifted up like an 
angry fist and slammed the door shut. 

She went back deliberately. “If we’re given to self-de¬ 
ception, it’s because we’ve gone from our cradles blind¬ 
folded with dreams. Nobody tells us to lift the bandage. 
Whatever wisdom a woman learns, she’s bought.” And 
paid for through the nose, she thought bitterly. Experi¬ 
ence was a dear possession. You learned, after a while, 
that it was best to go about the business of life armed. 
Love was a trap. You poked your silly inquisitive head 
into it and suddenly it closed on you, hurt you horribly, 
would not let you go. “ Half the women you know spoil 
things for themselves when they are too*young to know 
any better; and nobody stops them.” 

“ Nobody can stop them,” Anne said quietly. “ It’s a deep 
human instinct to spoil things. Blundering. . . .” 

Barbara wondered if she were thinking of Jim and of her¬ 
self, regretting having made a fetish of integrity. But after 
a moment she produced an odd, trenchant remark and 
handed it over with the air of dispensing a prescription 
from some secret medicinal store. “As you grow older 
you find that you don’t regret any experience, even the 
sharpest. Your experiences are your own . . . things 

to be stored away . . . sustenance for the soul.” 

An evening or two later, in the early hour after dinner, 


178 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

their talk turned to the future. Anne wanted Barbara to 
study medicine. 

“ But it means four years.” 

“ Not long,” Anne said. 

“ Too long for me,” said Barbara. “ I want to live a 
little, now. I'm sick of books; and I’d get frightfully fed, 
I’m afraid, of the whining sick. If I could qualify as a 
dietitian or a bacteriologist right away, I wouldn’t mind, 
but I want to get hold of some real money. Enough for a 
good time. I can’t get along on this two-penny, half-penny 
income; and I cannot teach now, until fall. I’m not very 
keen about teaching anyway, but one cannot force modern 
drama and Victorian poetry on the dear public in any other 
way and get returns. And the only near-practical subject 
I ever took was botany with Mark Hale which was sheer 
romance. With all you’ve gone through, Anne, I should 
think you’d have insisted on a practical education for me.” 

“ I was too eager,” Anne explained, “ to educate your 
soul.” 

“ I could go back to John Garsh, I expect; and trail along 
with him on the uproad.” 

“ Is that worth while for you ? ” 

“ Is anything worth while . . . for me ? ” 

“ Oh, Barbara.” 

Never had she brought to Anne’s mind so hauntingly the 
sharp fleeting loveliness of youth. She sat in the south 
dormer, looking down through the budding trees to the 
shimmer of sunset light on the grass, her hands listless in 
her lap. “ But how can she sit there so uselessly, doing 
nothing,” Anne thought and drove her needle through a 
fluff of batiste irritably. 

" For the matter of that, is anything worth while for 
anyone, now the war’s over? ” 

" Barbara . . . please. The war has delivered the 

world into the hands of your generation. There’s so much 
to be done . . . and life’s a short thing at best.” 

“ Persuade me of that if you can, old dear. Make me 
believe it’s short.” Barbara laughed. 


TOWER-TOWN 


179 


“ It seems to me I cannot bear to have you like this,” 
Anne said contemplating her mirth. “ You. All this time 
you’ve been growing up, you have been the meaning of 
things to me. I’ve pictured so many times what your life 
could be, what you could give the world out of the abun¬ 
dance of your gifts. Your fine strong body, your keen 
mind, your personality. I don’t see how you could have 
lived at St. Agatha’s these years and missed the idea of 
service, the necessity . . 

“ I haven’t missed it,” Barbara said lightly. “ The idea 
of service bores me to tears, that’s all. Aren’t you rather 
idealistic and old-fogyish, Anne ? What are other people to 
me that I should want to serve them? You do, perhaps, 
but the rest of us aren’t like that. If we don’t get what we 
want from love ... oh, call it sex, Anne ... the 
rest doesn’t matter. Nothing is worth doing. Have I hurt 
you, old dear? And I can’t help it because it’s the way I 
feel.” 

“ I’d have given all I possessed at your age to have had 
half your chance.” 

Looking at Anne’s set lips, it occurred to Barbara that 
it couldn’t have been much. They were miles apart. The 
closeness, the delicate understanding that had been part of 
her childhood with Anne, were gone. She thought of that 
childhood, wistfully. She had loved living through one 
luminous day after another, self-sufficient and unaware, 
even, of the world outside herself. The south dormer, the 
paper dolls of the bookcase apartment, the fire behind its 
brasses, the half-hour on the stairs at the day’s end, were 
things to be remembered all her life. But just now she did 
not want them. Now, she wanted to live feverishly, never 
stopping to think. 

“As for St. Agatha’s, I wish I could get away. It’s no 
place for the likes of me.” 

“ Go away from home, Barbara? ” 

“Anne, darling, if you must have it, from you. You’re 
far too good an influence. You carry too many of my 
burdens. I want to be on my own. Not paddling my own 


180 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

canoe too vigorously, you understand, but . . . drift¬ 

ing.” 

“ Dangerous business, drifting.” 

“ Thank the good God. Danger would add so much color 
to the days. And why not drift? I’ve no port or purpose. 
What does it matter what I do ? ” 

“ With life, you mean ? ” 

“ With life. With my keen mind and my marvelous gifts. 
Will they earn me money to spend, do you think ? ” 

“ Is it a question of money, Barbara? ” 

“ Dear Heaven, Anne. Isn’t everything a question of 
money ? ” 


II 

Miriam Payne arrived in the city early in June, fresh 
from a round of visits and over a luncheon at Field’s, gave 
Barbara bits of gossip about people they both knew. “ Pay¬ 
dirt ” Miriam called it. Her capacity for intimacies was 
infinite. She reacted warmly to the stimuli of new im¬ 
pressions and had an insatiable satisfaction in the small 
pleasures of the senses, in the freshness of a room pre¬ 
pared for her, in rich, delicate food, in smoothly running 
and luxurious cars, in hours of indolent chat with her 
hostess with the inevitable trend toward the confidential. 

“ I’m coming back to Chicago,” she told Barbara. “ I’ve 
a corking scheme I want to talk out with you. Dad has 
been pulling wires all spring to land me a job at his bureau, 
plain, prosaic work. But there it is. I wish you’d take it.” 

“ What about you ? ” 

“I’m going in with Michael Kent. Know him? Well 
. . . you wouldn’t. He’s an architect and a corking chap, 

clever, unconventional, crude beyond all words . . . 

frightfully intense if you know what I mean. I could tell 
you a thing or two about Michael Kent . . . and 

Miriam Payne.” 

“ Do you want to, Myrrh ? ” 

“ I might sometime. You’re untrammeled enough to 
catch the psychological significance of the affair. He’s one 


TOWER-TOWN 


181 


of these complex personalities that is forever seeking com¬ 
plexity in a woman; and he married young, some insig¬ 
nificant little thing. Tragic for him. Dad is half-wild at 
the thought of my going in with him, but the old dear has 
been trying for years to make me over into a milk-and- 
honey maiden such as he knew and loved when he was 
young. Fortunately his other daughters approach the ideal. 
Oh, I’ve been bored this year at home, Babs. No words to 
tell it. And you’re looking seedy yourself. We need each 
other, don’t we? I want you to come in with me. We 
could manage a corking flat between us.” 

“ I’d love it, Myrrh. What is it you’re going to do ? ” 

“For Michael? Oh, I’ve a choice of several things 
. . . designing draperies, perhaps, or doing interior 

decorating for the houses he plans, or landscaping. Eventu¬ 
ally I’m going to make a pot of money, Babs.” 

“ You’ve no training, have you? ” 

“ Honey, I’ve done a bit of reading . . . and be¬ 

sides, your personality is the thing that counts in a line like 
that. I’m going into Michael’s office, really, to help him. 
He says no woman has ever stirred him before . . . 

not as I’ve stirred him. It’s nothing like these silly boy 
and girl affairs of one’s teens. It’s big. Ruddy Gannet’s 
gone to Japan, hasn’t he ? Ever hear from him ? ” 

Swift color went up her face at a hidden mockery in 
Miriam’s voice and her eyes flashed black. For a second 
they confronted each other, their glances clashing like steel, 
but the next Miriam laughed and put her soft plump hand 
over Barbara’s. “ Don’t mind your old Myrrh,” she said in 
her creamy voice. “If you get him, I shall envy you all 
my life.” 

“ I shall never get him,” Barbara answered lightly. “ I 
don’t . . . want him.” 

It was true, but only in one sense. It shamed her, the 
way she wanted him still. The things she remembered 
. . . his soft, lusty laughter, his slanting look, the reck¬ 

less tilt of his mouth, silly things, poignant things. “ But I 
do want you, Myrrh. I’ll be glad to come in with you.” 


182 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

They found a thimble apartment in an old house a block 
or two west from the Avenue. Anne’s objection that in 
its disreputable age the place looked thoroughly unsanitary 
sounded old-fogyish and . . . like Anne . . . 

somewhat jealous. Anne was hurt, of course, at Barbara’s 
leaving. 

Tower-town was not a district Anne would understand. 
It was a district of aristocratic mansions, living on in the 
degraded phase of rooms-to-let, a gay district with an 
amazing conglomeration of cafes, cafeterias, confectioners, 
beauty-parlors, delicatessens, movies, shops, studios cluster¬ 
ing for blocks about the dun pinnacle of the water works. 
A district of youth. Girls and boys streamed along its 
highways after dark, avid of life and pleasure, danced 
at the “ Academy,” sat in the dark in the close-packed 
cinemas, loitered about the brightly lighted eating places, 
sang from the window-sills. In Tower-town it was no 
novelty for girls well-born and well-bred to live alone ac¬ 
knowledging a code not markedly strict; and in that bijou 
flat of theirs, Barbara and Miriam had a merry time of it, 
a queer, muddled, lazy, reckless time. They were types, 
both of them, to invite adventure. Barbara went indif¬ 
ferently to meet it. 

She earned a good salary without too strenuous effort 
and she spent it all and more on frocks and hats, on slippers, 
wraps, amusements as Miriam did, as most of the girls did 
in the group into which they presently drifted. As a mat¬ 
ter of fact, the girls in any group were a negligible factor 
to Barbara. Those she met at the office were cheery, nice 
things, rather elementary and stupid and those outside, as 
seductive and flippant as herself, figured as rivals when they 
figured at all. In the sandwich of work and pleasuring 
that made her life, Barbara found herself almost entirely 
dependent upon men. 

The Barbara Fallows of that second carnival year after 
the war was different from the Barbara Fallows of the year 
before, of any year before. Ruddy had left her frozen, but 
he had also, it developed, left her poised, insouciant, provoc- 


TOWER-TOWN 


183 


ative, fitted to meet the world and quite inclined to take 
from the passing day whatever proved amusing, even at 
the cost of some fragment of her self-respect. She had 
discovered that one could laugh at self-respect together 
with other quaint things one had cared about most; and that 
it was better to laugh, just as it was better to dance oneself 
weary enough to sleep rather than to lie awake at night 
trying to think things out She armored herself with dis¬ 
passionate frankness. It was no use bothering to lie to 
men. Collectively, of course, they made the world, but in¬ 
dividually, they were unimportant. 

Men, mostly, liked her. She gravitated toward the 
plumpish type who drove expensive cars and wore expensive 
clothing with an air of nonchalance and were easily enough 
amused not to require any strenuous effort on her part 
She told herself that sometime, five, eight, ten years away, 
when her fling was over, she would marry . . . for 

money. Meanwhile, gay and unstirred, she was having her 
fling. She dined and danced several times a week. She 
saw all the Follies and Scandals of the winter, each with a 
different man. She accepted lightly, constant gifts . . . 

candy, flowers, books, cigarettes, trinkets, silk stockings, 
kisses. . . . 

Of Miriam, absorbed in that affair with Michael Kent, 
Barbara really saw very little. And they often quarreled, 
shocking little quarrels, profane and racking. In their un¬ 
ordered life, they were both keyed to a tensity that found 
expression in a quick irritability and they admitted it half- 
jocosely in their casual reconciliations. That was what life 
was, when you saw it straight . . . beauty, profanin’, 

discontent, anger, pleasure, laughter all mixed together. 
They were part of life, pagans both of them, living vividly, 
hating austere Puritanic conventions, and seeing the shame 
of them. 

Barbara had a vague feeling a good many times that they 
looked at life not as Anne had, even in her twenties, but 
through pulsing, quite new emotions. However, they were 
unquestionably looking at life. W here Anne might have 


184 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

read Hardy and Shaw, Barbara and Miriam read Spingarn, 
Dreiser, Machen, Bojer, Hamsun; and they had rather the 
modern habit of subjecting themselves to a compound 
microscope, trying to discover by analysis whether their 
feelings were like those described in the books. But they 
never were . . . quite. 

Still, if the emotions themselves seemed pastel, they had 
the words to describe any feelings, a mad medley of words 
. . . repressions, inhibitions, Bolshevism, soviets, indi¬ 

vidual will, CEdipus, Electra-complex, class consciousness, 
Puritanism and smug hypocrisy, futility and sham, freedom, 
a moral realism, the new art, the new sculpture, the new 
frocks, the new dancing, the new love. They talked a great 
deal about love, discussing it emotionally and not at all 
biologically although the terms they used were blatantly 
biological. Morality wasn’t important ... at least 
compared with the needs of the individual soul. And it had 
the taint of Puritanism. Love was . . . Hadn’t the 

psycho-analyst proved love to be the fundamental of all 
life? They discussed differing types of women in connec¬ 
tion with what they called morality but what was really 
only as the type appealed to men, only as Barbara and 
Miriam, in comparison, appealed to men. They said daring 
things and watched each other out of half-suspicious eyes. 

“ You’ll never be popular with the intense type,” Miriam 
observed. “ There’s a lack of yield about you, Barbara. 
Men hate that.” 

“ Do they?” 

“You don’t mind my telling you? In a way, you’re 
stiff.” 

“ I think I just hate being promiscuously pawed,” 
Barbara admitted. She felt mortally old and more than 
ever certain that life was an idiot’s tale told dancing down 
the wind. “ I seem to have no heart for petting. ‘ God 
damn it, I’m a lady.’ ” 

Mark Hale came to call one Sunday in September. He 
had been wounded, a shell sending splinters into the sciatic 
nerve and he had waited for months in a convalescent 


TOWER-TOWN 185 

hospital, an intolerable burning sensation in his leg. His 
fellow officers called him Hot-foot Hale and he had come 
across in the dead of winter, barefoot, lying for hours at a 
time with a leg through the porthole. He would always be 
a little lame. He told Barbara about it as if the fact had 
elements of humor. 

Barbara frowned, cutting him short. “ I thought I’d have 
paid you back all I owe you, Mark, before this.” 

“ My dear girl, why be unpleasant to guests ? ” 

“ I’ve dunned myself over and over since I borrowed it. 
Fifty a year isn’t much to pay on a debt but it’s been the 
best I could do. I was born open-handed, I’m afraid. I 
haven’t saved a cent since I came into the flat with Myrrh. 
On the contrary . . . with rent what it is and every¬ 

thing so high. But after my fall wardrobe’s paid for, I 
can save. I’m sure it won’t go longer than spring, Mark.” 

“ You are making me exceedingly uncomfortable. Here, 
I’ve been living on the fat of the land at home all summer, 
saving half my year’s salary . . 

“ Saving ? ” she looked at him with a mockery of awe. 
“ Oh, wise young man. A Daniel come to judgment.” 

She fared hardly so well with Geoffrey. She met him 
the next week, unexpectedly toward the end of a gayly hap¬ 
hazard evening in a restaurant where the after-theater 
crowd were dancing; and they stared at each other across 
a barrier of tables, smiling recognition. But the moment 
they were dancing together, Geoffrey voiced a distinct dis¬ 
approval. 

“ What are you doing here ? ” 

“ What are you ? ” 

“ Someone at your flat told me where to find you. I had 
your address from Mark. I’ve wanted to see you.” 

“ It has been a long time.” 

“ Eight months,” he said. “ You were wearing a rather 
remarkable ring.” 

She lifted a slim bare hand from his arm and looked at 
it with a sweet smile that somehow masked so much. “ You 
can see it’s gone.” 


186 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

‘‘Then it couldn’t have been very . . . important?” 
His fingers closed hard on hers, unconsciously, she knew* 
and she lifted her eyes to his face, a grave, browned 
face. 

“ No. You look as if you’d spent the whole eight months 
outdoors.” 

He threw back his head and laughed. “ I would say that 
I had. A farm of a thousand acres requires some atten¬ 
tion between March and October. And we’ve been short 
of help” 

“ The useful professions always seem to be. St. Agatha’s, 
for instance. There’s never help enough. I didn’t know 
you were a farmer. Where is it ? ” 

“ Generations of us,” Geoffrey said lightly. “ My great¬ 
grandfather homesteaded the original half-section. It’s out 
Elgin way, in that river-valley south. The worst of the 
work’s over. I’m going to have time on my hands these 
next few months.” When she did not answer, he came 
back unexpectedly to his first query, “ What are you doing 
with this crowd ? They aren’t your sort.” 

“ Aren’t they ? What do you mean ? ” 

“ You know perfectly what I mean. I can mind my own 
business, however, since you so delicately suggest it. I’m 
not going to draft out life for you.” 

“ It would be some job, old dear,” Barbara answered 
still with her sweet smile. She sketched rapidly her life of 
the moment, her bijou flat, her partnership with Miriam. 
She rather emphasized the unrestricted freedom that was 
hers; and in return for his silence made a marked moment 
of omitting to ask him to call. Geoffrey frowned down at 
her thoughtfully. 

“ It seems to me you’re too . . . precious for that 

sort of thing.” 

“ You flatter me, Mr. Hale.” 

“ It dissipates you. I don’t mean physically. You’ve the 
health to stand it, probably. I mean your . . . fineness, 

your value. You’re flinging yourself hither and yon in bits. 
You know you are,” 


TOWER-TOWN 


187 


“ Like everyone else,” she protested listlessly. Weaving 
between the dancers she watched the whirling throng over 
his shoulder with a strange sense of aloofness. She thought 
they looked like a horde of mimic lovers, pat-patting through 
intricate slidings and gyrations, locked in each other’s arms, 
the women submissive. Almost no one was talking. The 
girls seemed frozen, dazed, their fingers resting stiffly on 
the men’s shoulders, their arms rigid, their faces turned 
beside their partners’ in profile, like figures on an Assyrian 
frieze. When Geoffrey muttered . . . “ Like every¬ 

one else ... a generation going to the wall,” she 
thought his phrasing slightly ridiculous. Still, it had ele¬ 
ments of truth. She saw herself against the wall, gay, 
bruised, uncaring, getting nowhere. “ It’s one way of kill¬ 
ing time,” she said. 

“ You like it dead, do you? ” 

When, afterward, that came back to her persistently, 
Barbara had a sense of futility. She did not like it dead. 
She had thought that with new contacts, money to spend, 
incessant pleasuring, she could save herself from suffering. 
But she had not. It was all pretense. Under that surface 
excitement and gayety, she suffered horribly. It seemed 
to her, at times, that she was battling in a salt sea of bitter¬ 
ness, its waters closing again and again over her head, 
smarting in her lungs. Now and then she could struggle up 
for a little into the clean air, and then she would go down 
again. . . . 

It was the whole history of the fifteen months she lived 
with Miriam. She had expected to cheat pain, and pain 
could not be cheated. Meals were eaten, music blared and 
rattled in her ears to make her dance, voices came and 
went while she endured it . . . pain that swept her 
at the sound of someone’s lusty laughter, at the sight of some 
man and girl at a table above an organdy-shaded candle, 
their hands touching over the tea-things. (Could a year run 
its interminable course and bring one no nearer to forget¬ 
ting?) It was nothing that, she told herself, he hadn’t been 
worth all that, that she did not respect him, that he had lied. 


188 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

It was dreadful to love a man like that, she stormed In¬ 
wardly, degrading, stupid. . . . But that was the way 

she loved him. 


Ill 

Geoffrey, as it turned out, did not wait for an invitation 
to call. And they met continually in odd ways, although it 
seemed surprising that a young man who had stayed all 
summer on a farm forty miles from Chicago found it neces¬ 
sary to drive in several times a week during a drizzling 
November. 

“ You are rather trying to lead me upward and on, aren’t 
you ? ” Barbara observed once with the cool disdain that 
was apt to descend on her like a blight. “ I haven’t been 
to a Symphony in two seasons. Are you taking me be¬ 
cause you like it? ” 

“ Because I thought perhaps you would,” he answered as 
gently as Mark would have answered. “ Wouldn’t you ? 
Honestly ? ” 

He was like Mark and then, the next moment, utterly 
unlike him. Their tricks of expression, their phrasings, 
their courtesies were much the same, and there was a di¬ 
rectness about them both that was like a clean, fresh wind. 
But with Geoffrey it blew harder than with Mark. Barbara 
thought of him as hard . . . hard of muscle, and of 
purpose and of judgment . . . not the sort from whom 
one could expect mercy if one blundered. Probably it was 
because the suspicion had crossed her own mind that she 
resented Miriam’s asking, “ Is he as much of a prig as his 
brother? ” 

“ I shouldn’t call him a prig, exactly. But I shouldn’t 
call Mark one.” 

“ Puritans,” Miriam called them, “ smug with self- 
righteousness. Like Doctor Linton.” 

“ You never are fair to Anne.” 

“ Oh, I’m not blaming Anne ... a middle-aged 
spinster with God knows what repressions. But one expects 
open-mindedness in one’s own generation.” 


TOWER-TOWN 


189 


“ Geoffrey says it’s a generation likely to go to the wall. 
Because of the war. We can’t quite compass the necessary 
adjustments. He and Mark seem to have come out of that 
sojourn in the Argonne with a curious new sense of values.” 

“ I can’t see what you find in him.” 

What did she find in him? Not much. She thought of 
him as a face, a pair of gentle hands, a steady voice. 
He was hardly more definite than that, hardly more than a 
shadow in her world of dancing shadows. Still, there was 
more. “ Something . . .” 

She tried to put it into words. “ Something in us alike, 
I think.” 

“ I shall never call you a Puritan, darling,” Miriam said. 

“ Something . . . resistant. It’s hard to explain. 

Geoffrey and I don’t agree about anything, apparently, on 
God’s green earth, but we do think alike. We do. Our 
minds work the same way, we see the same faces in a crowd 
. . . it’s like that. I may hate what he’s saying but I 

can get why he’s saying it. And I’ve the feeling that he 
sees through my poses as no one else does . . . though 

he hates posing.” 

“ Heavens. You’re not in love with him?” 

“ No,” Barbara said evenly. “ You’ve asked me that, 
haven’t you, about every man I’ve gone with twice? I 
can’t imagine loving Geoffrey.” The face she lifted had 
gone suddenly white and angry. What she meant was, “ I 
sha’n’t let myself love Geoffrey.” Love. . . . She had 

been seared and scarred with love. She wanted nothing of 
it. “ He disapproves of me too thoroughly.” 

“ He’s not the type to satisfy you,” Miriam said, using a 
favorite formula. “ At least you wouldn’t want to marry 
him.” 

Barbara lighted a cigarette and regarded Miriam a moment 
or two through the smoke of it. 

“ Why assume that I want to marry anyone. Our new 
social frankness leaves one a little afraid of marrying. 
Doesn’t it? You are so fully informed. The moment you 
Consider it you begin thinking of arguments against it. 


190 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

What I want is something that will make me believe in 
marriage . . . something unanswerable/’ 

“ I can’t quite see you going through life without it. I 
don’t get you, Babs, lately. You’re getting nowhere. For 
a woman like you . . .” 

“ You are about to give an excellent imitation of Anne, 
if you only knew it. She objects to my drifting. My 
getting nowhere.” 

“Well . . . are you? You’ve a paying job, but it’s 

one of these take-it-or-leave it political plums that you’re 
likely to lose the minute there’s a shake-up; and a green 
girl out of high school could do everything you’re doing, 
after a fortnight. I never dreamed you’d hold it more than 
six months until you’d found something else ... or 
until you did marry. But you’ve played around with a 
dozen men this year and not played fair with one of them.” 

“Were you expecting me to play fair?” (Why should 
any woman play fair with men? After she knew them.) 
“ Perhaps, darling, I haven’t your talent for discovering the 
satisfactory type.” 

Miriam said softly, “You went rather mad over Dirck 
Gannet, once, didn’t you ? ” 

“ Did I ? And do you think Ruddy was the type to satisfy 
me? An other-soul . . . like Michael Kent? ” 

Miriam’s face darkened at the mention of Michael. “ At 
least, he could have married you. He didn’t have a stupid 
wife. . . .” 

Barbara smiled a little. “ No. He didn’t have a wife,” 
she said. But she said nothing more. She threw her 
burned-out cigarette down the fireplace and, as though the 
subject bored her, went to the telephone a little ostenta¬ 
tiously to talk to Geoffrey. 

Yet as the spring advanced she saw less and less of him. 
He slipped indefinably away. Their accidental meetings 
stopped altogether and he either came to town very little 
when the farm work began (which Barbara did not believe) 
or he spent his time elsewhere. She checked Miriam’s 
pointed inquiries by that faint air of indifference that had 


TOWER-TOWN 191 

by now become something more than a pose. It didn’t 
really matter. . . . 


IV 

She went through the summer listlessly, physical depres¬ 
sion hanging on her like a weight. The energy of her spirit 
and the breath of her body alike seemed suspended. She 
hated eating, the odor of food and the effort of putting 
food to her lips. It seemed a long way up the stairs from 
the street and a long way even from the back porch to 
her bedroom on hot nights. For days her head ached and 
she felt dizzy and half exhausted but she did not speak of 
it to anyone. Really, she thought very little about it. It 
seemed only a part of the general discomfort of the sum¬ 
mer, including as its sole virtue a certain numbness of 
thought and feeling. Her detachment was no longer a pose. 
At last, she thought, she was coming into peace. The 
passion and the turmoil were over. 

Then, one hot afternoon late in August with a sultry 
wind blowing and the pavements fiercely brilliant in the sun¬ 
light, a dun-colored car swept close to the curb where she 
was standing and Ruddy stepped out. 

“ Barbara . . . Barbara . . . Barbara . . 

his voice said above her. It terrified her. Wicked, it was, 
that after all this time her pulses should plunge and her 
heart race at the touch of his hand. (Wasn’t one ever 
cured of that sort of thing?) He looked so tremendously 
strong and big . . . too strong by odds for her com¬ 

bating with her single weapon of unconcern. With both 
hands she put the thought away from her that after all, 
love had been joyous and that now though she was free of 
love, she was without joy. 

“You’ve been gone a long time. And a long way?” 

“Around the world.” With that look in his eyes, he 
might never have gone away at all. But he was changed, 
too . . . was surer. Of himself. Of his charm. Of 

the power of his money. Women had been teaching him 


192 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

those things that year. A sort of post-graduate course. 
. . . “ I wish you’d been along.” 

“ ‘ Having a fine time . . . wish you were here/ ” 

Barbara murmured. 

“ It can’t last, you know, Babs.” 

“ What can’t last ? ” 

“ This being in the world and not together.” 

She made no answer and they stood in silence. It was 
toward six and the tide of home-bound traffic rushed past 
them, halting, moving, now held at a crossing, now flowing 
on. For all the heat she felt chilly and curiously stupid. 
She could think of nothing sufficiently clever to be worth 
saying and stood helplessly feeling the crowds brush against 
her, remembering how hard Ruddy’s arms had been about 
her . . . how strong. 

Her brain caught at the word “ strong.” She had been 
strong enough to send him away a year and a half ago 
. . . but she hadn’t known, then, what the months were 

going to mean. They hadn’t given her back her illusions 
. . . (widened her knowledge, rather, so that she trusted 

him less than ever, and could suffer more, not trusting 
him) . . . nor her pride nor her self-confidence. All 

they had done was to prick out her weaknesses so that she 
saw them clearly herself. Now, she had not the strength 
to stand against him. It was taking all her scourged cour¬ 
age to face him; and the feel of his hand, the familiar break 
in his voice sapped her resistance. What she wanted was 
strength, calm and steady strength, greater than her own. 
She thought vaguely of having strength given to her 
in transfusion by some blessed surgery, as one could be 
given fresh blood from a friend’s veins, arms bound to¬ 
gether. 

“ Myrrh told me where to find you,” Ruddy said. “ I’ve 
been waiting. All these months I’ve wanted you more than 
I ever wanted anything. And now . . . you’re more 

even than I remembered, Babs. Can’t we ? ” 

“ Chuck everything, you mean, and go back ? As we 
were ? ” 


TOWER-TOWN 193 

He could not have understood the sweet, unreal smile 
twisting on her lips. 

“ As we were/’ he said. “ You know I shall marry you, 
sometime.” 

“ Really? ” 

. She laughed a little, wondering just how long that flimsy 
mask of mockery would wear. Could she keep it on until 
she could get away? Somewhere. Get away somewhere 
where she could think again, clearly. 

“ It's as certain as Heaven, old Babs,” Ruddy said soberly, 
with his eyes dancing. “ To-morrow, I think. To-night, 
I’ll begin making love to you again. Well drive somewhere 
for dinner where it’s cool.” 

“ Sorry,” she said sweetly, but her voice didn’t quite 
answer the whip. It stumbled a little, like Ruddy’s. She 
had to stop and wait an instant before she could trust it 
entirely. “ You do it so nicely. But to-night, I’m afraid, 
I can’t manage love-making. I’ve a date . . . dinner 

and d-dancing.” Her teeth chattered a little uncontrollably 
behind the mask. 

“ You can break that,” he said easily, one hand at her 
elbow. “What do you want with a date, darlin’ goose. 
Get into the car. . . .” 

“ S-sorry. . . .” She gave him a dismissing flicker of 

the fingers. Her voice achieved airy stubborn coolness. 
“ I couldn’t break it, possibly. Not this date.” 

She was afraid . . . afraid. Her knees trembled as 

she walked away. She had the fantastic sense of being in 
danger, of an undertow pulling at her feet and waves 
lapping softly upon them. They would engulf her 
finally . . . those waves. They would come higher 
and higher, lapping insidiously against her, and take her 
down. . . . 

“If I loved him enough . . . with more than the 

flesh,” she thought stupidly over and over. “ Every pulse 
in my body pounding . . . and underneath something 

. . . something hard that doesn’t want him. I’m run¬ 
ning away from him. . . 


194 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


But if he came again, she would go back. She would 
belong to him, not quite wanting him, never trusting him, 
that something that was herself disintegrating under a force 
stronger than she. If she was to save herself . . . 

In a drug-store at the next corner, she went into a tele¬ 
phone booth and gave a number, asking almost with the 
same breath for Mr. Hale. 

“ This is Barbara/’ she said when he answered. 
“ Barbara Fallows.” 

“ Yes. I knew your voice.” 

There was a pause. “ It’s you, is it?” she asked. “ It 
was Mark I wanted.” 

“ Mark went out to Wynville this afternoon. Wouldn’t 
I do?” 

“Well . . . would you? I told a man on the street 

just now that I had a dinner-date which would prevent my 
dining with him. I thought Mark perhaps would make it 
true.” 

“ Are you at home ? And where shall we go ? ” 

“ No. I’m in a drug-store six or seven blocks north on 
Michigan from where you are. I’ll go anywhere where 
there is food. Would you mind hurrying? I’m almost 
famished.” 


XII 


GEOFFREY 

I 

But when food was before her she could not eat. She 
liked the quiet of the place to which he took her, the mel¬ 
low light beside their table, the music drifting in from the 
lounge; but the soup was difficult to swallow and the delicate 
odor of the chicken on her plate sickened her a little. She 
forced herself to nibble at it and sipped her coffee. “ A 
spoonful or two of hot coffee, dear,” Anne had urged so 
many times, “ and you’ll have a coming appetite.” She 
could have prayed for appetite but grace was not granted 
her. So she dipped her spoon in and out of her cup, feel¬ 
ing rather ineffectual, and studied the man opposite. 

There was certainly nothing ineffectual about Geoffrey 
Hale. She had a shamed feeling of having forgotten how 
he looked. He had that trick of keeping his mouth closed 
at the corners while he talked that kept one watching his 
lips. He was tanned and hard. Panic still broke over 
her at intervals, but she felt that for this hour, with 
Geoffrey, she was safe. 

“ You’re thin,” he said abruptly. “ You’re thinner than 
I’ve ever seen you. Your eyes are too big for your face.” 

“That’s not at all pretty of you. It’s the heat, I guess. 
Hard to sleep these hot nights. Am I dreadfully ugly ? ” 

“Not . . . ugly, exactly.” 

“ Thanks a lot.” 

“ But you look spent.” He paused unexpectedly and ap¬ 
praised her. “Bankrupt, as if you were throwing away 
all you had.” 

“ I’m always bankrupt.” 

“If you were to tell me you were in love, I’d under¬ 
stand.” 

“ I'm not.” After a moment she added with hushed dar- 


196 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

ing, “ That’s the answer, of course. Is any woman beautiful 
except when she’s in love ? ” 

If he had appeared to hear, she might have gone on and 
told him of the fantastic fancies that were drifting con¬ 
fusedly through her mind . . . fires that had blazed 

and died down ... a black sea whose waves came lap¬ 
ping up and up softly. . . . She shivered in the chill 

of the cool room and took up her fork to make a pretense of 
eating. 

“ I’m always surprised to find you tall,” said Geoffrey 
making conversation. “ I think of you as a little girl who 
should be taken care of. It began as long ago as the first 
day I saw you, down at Pinelands, when you were the 
Interpreter.” 

“ Nice of you,” Barbara murmured perfunctorily. She 
cared nothing at all about being taken care of. “ It was 
sheer irony, wasn’t it, my being the Interpreter ? I’ve never 
been able to interpret writing on the wall, even when it’s 
as simple as A B C. I wonder why they gave it to me.” 

“ You were very lovely.” 

“ Lovelier than now ? ” Barbara mocked. “ Look closer.” 

“ Lovelier than now,” Geoffrey said evenly. 

“ Younger. And just emerging from the shell of Puritan 
upbringing. But that isn’t what you mean. You mean 
that Barbara Fallows, that day, would hardly have scraped 
acquaintance with a strange man on a street-car . . . 

(How you have held that against me all this time. . . .) 

or let a boy who was going away to war, kiss her behind the 
bridal wreath like a probationer.” 

“ Lots of girls do that sort of thing. It’s rather unim¬ 
portant, all of it.” 

“ Still . . . not quite unimportant enough to forget. 
In your heart, you’re thinking that because I know all the 
passwords, I ought to care about dignity . . . and the 

proprieties, unimportant though they be. And you’re afraid 
I don’t.” 

“ Do you?” 

“ No. Not much.” 


GEOFFREY 


197 


“ It’s your unconcern that puzzles me,” Geoffrey said. 
“ It is so infinitely pathetic. You see, I’ve never thought 
of you as the sort of girl I’m finding you.” A slow flush 
rose under his clear skin. His voice dropped and his words 
lagged a little. “ I’ve dreamed dreams. About you. Ever 
since that first day. All the time you wrote me . . . 

the sort of letters I knew you were writing to half a dozen 
others . . . I let myself dream. Perhaps that kiss did 

give them rather a color of reality. I’m twenty-eight nearly, 
and I have never asked any girl to marry me; but I am 
never with you that I don’t think I may ask you in another 
minute.” 

“ This minute is here,” Barbara suggested politely. 

Geoffrey shook his head and looked at her out of eyes 
suddenly grave. “ I’m in earnest, my dear. It’s jumpy 
work when you think what you stand to lose. I’ve wanted 
to be sure. Oh, I’m thinking of you, too. I do sound fond 
of myself, don’t I ? But I want to be sure for ... us. 
I know exactly what I want life to be like for ... us. 
Not the formula people seem to be working out over and 
over, everywhere. Something . . . older than that. 

Oh, Barbara, I want living. I want glow and color to life. 
I want to make life full of it for the woman that’s sharing 
mine. I dare say I’m a fool to want so much. I dare say 
I’ll never quite make it. But . . . even so . . . 

am I to bring myself to wanting less? ” 

She gave up the pretense of interest in food. Her hands 
folded one above the other at the edge of the table and she 
looked at him with level eyes, wondering exactly what he 
meant. His rough sensitiveness shook her. The thought 
strayed into her mind that marriage with Geoffrey Hale 
would put a woman irrevocably behind the wall of his 
strength and keep her safe. One respected marriage. 

“Am I to ... to consider this a proposal, by any 
gracious chance ? ” she asked him with a breath of laugh¬ 
ter. “ Or is this part of your regular line ? The one that 
begins, 4 I’m going to kiss you on the mouth.’ You didn’t 
ask me outright to marry you, you know,” 


198 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ No,” he said evenly, “ I did not.” 

“ And that makes it awkward,” she jeered faintly. “ Be¬ 
sides leaving me dreadfully abashed.” The thought stabbed 
her that he might not think her worth marrying, that he 
distrusted her. And she remembered the scorn in Ruddy’s 
voice when he had spoken of Jane Treves. A shadowy 
smile twisted her mouth. She had been careful that no 
man could have the right ever to say, “ That kind of a 
girl,” in that kind of voice. Too wise, she’d been, for that. 
Yet Geoffrey . . . 

Geoffrey was saying, “ Because I’ve no right to ask you, 
Barbara. I’ve hardly a red cent to call my own. The war’s 
delayed things enough for me so that I’m still on the first 
round of the ladder. I’d hate being poor . . . with 

you. It might be worth the risk if you cared for me at all. 
But you don’t love me. . . .” 

She stared at him as he stopped abruptly. It seemed 
incongruous to hear a man talking of love as if it were a 
necessity. She had never thought of loving him. 

“ I can’t think why, I’m sure,” she murmured. “ It seems 
the best little play I could make.” 

Geoffrey answered her with a wide grin. “ I’d like to 
shake you, Barbara, best of anything in the world.” 

“ But not . . . ask me to marry you? ” 

“Is it a scalp you’re after? Girl, I’d be a fool and 
worse to . . .” 

“ Then I will ask you,” she said slowly. It was as if a 
black wave rose high between them and her hands clutched 
instinctively at the table’s edge. She held on very hard as 
she spoke. “ Will you . . . marry me, Geoffrey Hale ? 

Will you?” 

The words reverberated in a strange stillness. She saw 
him bend forward, his astonished brown face with its pene¬ 
trating gaze very close. Then it receded in the mist that 
floated before her, the spume of the wave. His voice came 
to her amazingly far-off, amazingly vibrant. 

“ Barbara. Risk it ? Has it got you, too ? ” 

“I don’t . . . know. I just don’t know,” she said 


GEOFFREY 199 

shaping the words with difficulty. “It’s your risk, too. 
I’m frightfully tired, Geoff, tired of storms, tired of think¬ 
ing, even. And I’m afraid. I’m terribly afraid . . . 
not of you, not of marrying you, not of outside things at 
all. It’s something inside. Trouble . . she stopped 
an instant and looked at his unsmiling, puzzled face. 
“ Geoffrey,” she cried out, “ if I were drowning and called 
to you, you’d help me. You’d come and pull me out, 
wouldn’t you? Without asking questions? Wouldn’t 
you?” Tears came into her eyes and she brushed them 
away without moving her look from him. Her lips quiv¬ 
ered into a faint smile. “ You don’t understand at all, do 
you ? ” 

She was quite sure that he did not. The silence length¬ 
ened while she watched his face. She saw pity in his eyes 
and felt absurdly humiliated. She did not want pity. She 
beat it back determinedly with a funny gesture. It was a 
gesture of despair and so funny that they both laughed. 
“ I’ll be getting home,” Barbara said. “ Never mind talk¬ 
ing about love. . . 

As she stood up the mist grew denser and the black 
waves that had risen palpably with every beat of her heart 
rolled in upon her with a great roar. Undertow pulled at 
her resistlessly. She struggled to stand, to beat back the 
black waters swirling about her, to regain her breath so 
that she could call out. She heard a voice calling her name 
and with an infinite effort she opened her eyes wide. She 
caught a glimpse of Geoffrey’s face . . . but the waves 

came between and swept her beyond his reach. She felt 
herself floating quietly beneath them, sinking away depth 
under depth, down and down. . . . 

II 

When she opened her eyes there was a huge barred patch 
of sunlight lying on a field of white. She turned her head 
drowsily and saw an unfamiliar window set in an un¬ 
familiar wall. Beside the window a narrow table spread 
with a white towel and supported a man’s straw hat. A 


200 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

straight chair stood primly, close to her bed. She was lying 
flat with her head thrown back against a hard pillow. The 
white field was a coverlet and she could make out the line 
of an iron footrail about which was a high screen cutting off 
the rest of the room; but she had a glimpse of the top of a 
half-open door above it and by listening with some intent¬ 
ness, she made out a man’s voice talking. 

“I want to marry her when she wakes up. We were 
talking about it. . . .” 

It was Ruddy, then. She tried to lift herself on her 
elbow to cry out that she did not want to marry him, that 
she could not endure the pain of that. . . . There was 

a murmuring and after it the same clear, incisive voice. 
“ Her people are dead. She has been living quite inde¬ 
pendently in a flat with another girl/’ 

The voice drifted away and Barbara closed her eyes, 
drowsing. When she opened them, a dark-haired girl in 
blue chambray and a peaked cap was looking down at her. 
“ She is awake,” she said without moving, “ if you want to 
see her, Mr. Hale.” 

Geoffrey. She smiled a little as he moved about the 
screen and knelt beside her, his troubled face close to hers. 
“ Barbara,” he said softly, “ I want you to marry me now 
. . . to-day. Will you ? ” 

“ Why ? ” she asked in a whisper. 

“ Dear, you’re ill. You fainted last night in the res¬ 
taurant. Do you remember? The doctors here say that 
you’ll be ill a long time. A long, long time; and I . . . 

want to take care of you. I’ve always wanted to take care 
of you. I’ve been here all day, waiting for you to open 
your eyes.” 

“ What time is it?” 

“ Nearly five o’clock. I’ve the license. . . .” 

“ I remember. I asked you to marry me.” 

“ Hush. Now, I’m asking you. I . . . love you. 

Do you understand ? ” 

She nodded. She understood perfectly, but she could not 
help wondering why. Perhaps someone had explained 


201 


GEOFFREY 

about Ruddy and he saw how impossible it was, realized 
that she did not have the strength to combat Ruddy’s will. 
Her eyes closed again and she felt him take her hands and 
hold them in his . . . deliciously cool. 

“It’s for you to say, Barbara,” he persisted. “Will 
you ? ” 

She tried to speak, but for a moment her tongue was too 
thick and stiff to move and the words did not come. “ I 
don’t care,” she brought out finally. 

At once she heard a hushed movement in the room 
. . . steps and the scraping of wood on the floor. The 

screen was pushed aside and Barbara saw a man sitting in 
a chair by the door, a line of white showing above the black 
collar of his coat. Another man with a tiny mustache came 
in and put cold fingers on her wrist and nodded. “ All 
right,” he said. He stood back beside the nurse at the 
window, talking with her and smiling, and Geoffrey came 
and lifted her hand, his fingers interlacing with hers. His 
hand was blessedly cool, blessedly strong and firm. She 
thought that it would be easy to love his hands and she 
would have liked to ask him to put them on her forehead 
and keep them there until the dizzy pain left her, but she 
knew it would be too long a time. The ring that he slipped 
on her finger was cool . . . she heard the murmur of 

his voice . . . heard old words and the far-away sound 

of a prayer. . . . 

Marriage? It was impossible. It was too brief, too un¬ 
convincing. Her eyes closed and it seemed to her that she 
was too sleepy ever to open them again. She was dropping 
deep into sleep, a sleep that would be very long and dark 
and peaceful. But she did open them again when Geoffrey’s 
lips, firm and cool like his hands, brushed against her mouth. 
She caught at his sleeve and pulled him down to her. “ I’d 
like to go back to St. Agatha’s,” she whispered. “To 
. . . Anne.” 

And was disturbed by the flash of amazement across his 
face. 





II 


BARBARA HALE 



XIII 


ST. AGATHA’S 

So she came back to St. Agatha’s. 

September and October passed while she lay, not in her 
own room under the mansard roof, but in a sunny chamber 
on the first floor of the hospital, away from the noise of 
the paved streets. She was extraordinarily at peace. Her 
weakness saved her from thinking and she lay drowsily 
through many days, aware from time to time of burning 
heat flaming within her. Everything outside herself was 
vague and dreamlike. People seemed as shadowy as her 
thoughts, the nurses and interns in white uniforms moving 
in a mist that had the familiar sweetish smell of ether 
. . . Geoffrey sitting surprisingly in a chair beside her 

and vanishing from it quite as surprisingly . . . Anne. 

Anne was there hourly. Anne’s cool, soft hand on her 
forehead was a delightful thing. She slept with the blessed 
sense of Anne’s nearness. 

Little by little there came to her the rapture of returning 
strength. New life pulsed through her; she was able to 
be propped up and look out into the tree close where the 
croquet ground had been; she could walk from her bed to 
a chair. But it was late in November before she was back 
in the south dormer, peering down on a squat earth or had 
a sense of contact with the outer world. 

Presently Anne let people in to see her. Children who 
had lived in the apartments about St. Agatha’s long ago and 
remembered her, girls from Pinelands and Franklin, Dreka 
McLaurin with her babies and the Beautiful Lady, fragile 
and shabby, a teacher she had had in the seventh grade 


206 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

and forgotten. They were visits that left her strangely 
humble. She had thought all those crowded years that she 
had not had friends . . . 

Garsh came, bringing her a sheaf of flamboyant chrysan¬ 
themums, and relapsed awkwardly into the Chesterfield, 
rolling the cigar he felt could not be smoked between his 
fat lips, and talking in commercial phrases rapidly of things 
that were happening . . . shop-talk. A great actor had 

come under his management that fall. A delicate French 
play was being translated in which he was to star Nancy 
Danyers when her present contract expired. Two years 
more and he would be in New York . . . the Big 

Town. He gave himself two years. He made his customary 
suggestion that Barbara come back to the uproad, and 
when she shook her head he called her Kiddo, saying good¬ 
bye with his fat hand curled gently over hers. 

Mark came. It embarrassed her that he should be sit¬ 
ting there in Anne’s room, not knowing about Geoffrey. 
The years of the war had changed him more than they had 
changed any of the other men she knew. The youngsters 
had sobered, perhaps, but they were still jovial, still careless; 
and Mark had aged. His hair had grayed at the temples and 
his thin, narrow face had lost its whimsicalness. He seemed 
worn, like Torrey and like Torrey, too, he had a philosophy 
based on a knowledge of the fundamentals that had been 
swept away. To Barbara, who had never learned them, an 
immense abyss seemed to have opened between them. It 
was difficult to think of anything to say. In a pause she 
began nervously to talk of the money she had borrowed 
from him four years before. 

“ Don’t,” he said. “ If you take ten years, what does it 
matter ? ” 

“ Can’t you understand that it matters to me ? I had 
such high hopes at first, but in the stock company there 
were clothes to buy that took almost all I made and at college 
I earned nothing and everything . . . books and board 

and clothes . . . went up and up. I couldn’t tell 

Anne. I never have. It is like starting a South American 


ST. AGATHA’S 207 

revolution to talk debt to Anne. And all this time Fve been 
living with Myrrh . . 

“ I don’t want it, child. Forget about it. You’ve months 
ahead of you getting well.” 

“ It’s that I don’t know now when I can pay you.” 

Tears came into her eyes. The instant’s vehemence was 
too much for her and Mark went away at once. The next 
day it was Miriam who dropped in, full of plans for the 
winter. She had spent the summer in Canada but now 
she wanted Barbara to take another apartment. 

“ And go on as we have been, Babs. I’ve a corking job. 
Dad pulled his customary wires for me. Eventually it 
ought to mean a mint of money.” 

“ Then you’ve given up your work with . . .” 

“ Michael Kent ? Rather. I overestimated him to tell 
you the truth, Barbara. I thought he was a genius with 
wings and he was no more than a plodder satisfied to dig 
day after day, into one piece of work after another. We 
didn’t climb the heights I thought we’d climb. He wasn’t 
capable of climbing . . . heights. Once he’d be at 

work he rather assumed . . . nasty little way he had 

of conveying his assumptions . . . that I was the of¬ 

fice-girl, getting down at nine in the morning and keeping 
hours just as he did. He had a kind of fixed routine 
. . . unendurable. And the minute things slowed up 

last spring, as they did, he developed a stingy streak. He 
had all the essential qualities of a tight-wad to begin with 
. . . figuring out what his office expenses were to the 

penny and knowing what his car cost him per mile. . . . 

I’d call him undiscerning. He said some very unap¬ 
preciative things about my work. . . .” She broke on 

a note of smooth laughter and dropped into a bleak little 
silence, her face darkening. “ Of course, the situation that 
he developed for me was the decisive factor. He wasn’t 
. . . fine. I’d told him from the first that the only pos¬ 

sible solution of the problem was for him to divorce Milly. 
She would have everything then that she was capable of 
appreciating. She’d have had the two children and his 


208 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

name and alimony. She’d have been the first Mrs. Kent. 
As it stood the situation was rather ambiguous for me. 
But there’s nothing disgraceful about divorce. It wasn’t as 
if she were able to understand him. Besides she didn’t 
have to give him up. He could have given her the house 
. . . God knows I didn’t want it . . . and we’d 

have taken a smart little apartment; he could have turned 
over the family car and I’d have managed with a sport 
model or coupe. And he could have seen her as often as 
she wanted him. I’d have shared him. All I was asking 
was the honest solution. I couldn’t go on as I was. . . . 

One couldn’t expect an insignificant little thing like 
Milly to catch the significance of it, although I went and 
talked with her . . . but it did seem as if Michael, after 

a year, might have shared my point of view. He was fright¬ 
fully miffed about my going to her ... to Mrs. Kent. 
As if it weren’t better all around to have a clear under¬ 
standing. He intimated that he was quite satisfied with 
things as they were, with Milly, I mean. Of course she 
asks very little. . . . That’s the damnable thing about 

lifting yourself above the ordinary. Life is a lot easier, 
old thing, when your demands on it are meagre. Most 
women don’t ask for freedom. Have I told you about 
Paul Goddard ? ” 

“ Who is he? Anyone I’ve met? ” 

“ No. I only met him myself since I came back. He’s 
a lawyer with offices in the same building where I’m to 
work. Rather nice, slow, practical mind, the antithesis I 
need for my idealism, I think. And I’m beginning to feel 
that perhaps he needs my enthusiasms . . . for inspira¬ 

tion. He’s doing very well. He lost his wife two years 
ago. Nobody wrote me, Hon, that you were so ill. I never 
dreamed you’d be laid up all this time or I’d have come 
before.” 

“ You couldn’t have seen me if you had come. I’ve been 
clear down.” . I 

“ Dear Heaven, Babs ... not that tone in your 
voice. Don’t let yourself slip into one of those lazy con- 


ST. AGATHA’S 209 

valescences. There's work to be done in the world, my 
dear. When will you be back with me ? ” 

“I’m . . . not coming back." Barbara’s shy tone 

caught Miriam’s attention. She sat frozenly still with a hard 
look in her narrow eyes. “ I’m married, Myrrh." 

The guarded look prolonged itself. Miriam’s full upper 
lip lifted above her teeth and for a moment she looked 
almost ugly. After what seemed a long silence, she 
said: 

“ So you landed Dirck Gannet, after all." 

“ No," Barbara answered evenly. “ No, it wasn’t Ruddy. 
I married Geoffrey Hale." 

“ My soul and body," breathed Miriam. “ Why ? ’’ 

But that was a question whose answer Barbara did not 
put into words. She smiled a little. “ You might wish me 
happiness, mightn’t you ? " 

“ Of course. I think you’ve done pretty well for your¬ 
self. The Hales are worth marrying, once you get out of 
Chicago. They’re in Who’s Who . . . that sort of 

thing. Dad’s always running up against old Cyrus Hale, 
Geoffrey’s father, down-state. You’ve done pretty well 
. . . but you zvoiild, Babs. You’ve always known how 

to pick men and manage them. I thought you’d arrive at 
Dirck, though, in the end." 

“ No. And please don’t tell this, Myrrh. Nobody knows 
it except Anne and you." 

“ Only," Miriam asked with her air of amused banter, 
“what am I going to do with life, now?" 

It was after Miriam’s visit, after the propounding of that 
absurd question, that Barbara began to think. As she lay 
in the south dormer, her eyes on the blurred blue-gray sky, 
it occurred to her that she was having leisure to give to 
thinking for the first time since the long days of her child¬ 
hood, those days that had ended sharply with the scarlet- 
ringed Day of days when she began to live. She had lived 
swiftly since, never stopping to ask the meaning of the 
things that had happened. Meanings had not mattered. She 
had only hurried on eagerly, impatient to find what life had 


210 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

in store for her, the pace growing faster through' the* 1 ; 
crowded years, with an accumulated impetus of events. 

Now all that was at an end. Here in Anne’s high, quiet 
room, with the stir of the hospital beneath her, she lay and 
thought, trying to adjust herself to the cul-de-sac in which 
she had come to a halt. The simile satisfied her. She 
thought of the past five years as a maze through which 
she had been running blindly, taking no note of the turn¬ 
ings she had chosen. Now, she found a certain arid pleas¬ 
ure in taking note of them. What would have happened if 
she had chosen other ways? If she had kept on up the 
stairs to Choral Union and left Ruddy standing at the door 
. . . if she had not gained a year and gone to college 
. . . if she had never seen Jane Treves or sought her 
out? Would she have missed the pain with which all her 
memories were tinged? And would she have missed, too, 
the tumultuous joy that she had known, the secret, radiant 
happiness? Would she have come to this . . . the 

marriage that hourly amazed her with its existence? 

The thing that Miriam said recurred to her and she felt 
an ironic amusement. Miriam had said that Barbara knew 
how to manage men, that in any case, she would have 
married well. And Miriam knew her best of anyone. 
She threw back her head and laughed soundlessly. She had 
known so little how to manage men that she had not held 
one man even when she gave him all her love, when holding 
him had meant all the joy she asked of life. She had had 
to let him go. She was glad no one could know the bitter¬ 
ness of that failure of hers; nor the terror of yielding that 
had driven her from Ruddy into the uncompromising se¬ 
curity of marriage. 

She was the wife of Geoffrey Hale. Barbara Hale. The 
name had a strange ring of reality and she tried it many 
times, whispering it under her breath . . . Barbara 

Hale, Mrs. Geoffrey Hale . . . not Barbara Fallows, 

but Barbara Hale. And one day she went down to the 
Staff library on the floor below and sought out a certain 
fat red volume that stood on the lowest shelf. It was a 


211 


ST. AGATHA'S 

book she had avoided hitherto, despising its dulness, but she 
took it back with her to the south dormer and opened it 
wide on her knee. 

“ Hale . . . Cyrus Mark . . .” she came on the 

name suddenly, “ farmer, b. at Wynville, Ills., Sept, io, 
i860; s. of Samuel and Martha (Storrs) H.; ed. Pine- 
lands Academy; 2 yrs. U. of Mich.; m. Dorothea Geoffrey 
of Bangor, Me., Aug. 2, 1886. Farming in Ills, since 1885. 
Ills Sch Bk Comm 1898-1905; Ills State senate 1896-8; 
pres Ills st Bd of Agr; dir Far. Inst; Saddle and Sirloin 
(Chicago) Contrib Breeders’ Gazette, Rurl New Yorker.” 

“ Hale . . . James Storrs. Bishop, b. at Wynville, 

Ills, July 1, 1858; s. of Samuel and Martha. . . .” 

She turned the page and found “ Hale, Mark, botanist, b. 
at Wynville Ills. Dec 3 1887, s. of Cyrus (q. v.) and 
Dorothea (Geoffrey) H.” The simple presentation of facts 
interested her, leaving to the imagination as it did all the 
romance hidden in those recorded dates. She thought of 
that Samuel and Martha Hale whose lives, passed on what 
was the frontier of a wakening country, had left no mark 
save their names lingering like living things in the annals of 
their sons. She speculated a little on those lives, linked by 
the thin chain of circumstance to hers, on Martha Storrs 
married to Samuel, living with him and bearing his children, 
on Dorothea Geoffrey, marrying Martha’s son and rearing 
hers to marry Barbara Fallows. She wondered how the 
years had passed while these things were happening, what 
sacrifices, what happiness they had known, what secret re¬ 
bellions they had crushed back. Then she turned the pages 
slowly, looking for other names, professors at Franklin 
oddly more human than she had found them in the flesh, 
Nancy Danyers, Halforth of St. Agatha’s. With a quick 
flash of remembrance she went back and ran her finger 
down the margin of a page. “ Linton . . . Anne E. 

phys. and surg.” 

She read the data twice with an intent gravity and when 
she had done, she thrust the book away and closed her eyes. 
So that was Anne . . . Linton of St. Agatha’s . . . 


212 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

schooled at Dublin and Vienna . . . attending surgeon 
. . . decorated by the Serbian government as a chevalier 

of the Order of St. Sava ... a commission carrying 
the rank of sergeant major. . . . 

Not the Anne she had known. Not that Anne who lived 
a busy, eternally interrupted life, taking her snatches of 
leisure in a wide room at the top of an old house, singing 
to a small girl at twilight, talking companionably of spelling 
words and fairy tales ... an Anne whose harsh in¬ 
tegrity was overlaid in spite of her with the tolerance experi¬ 
ence brought her so that her brusque friendliness went out 
to everyone, to *94, to interns and nurses, dispensary 
poor, women sick and women sorry, pathetically in 
need of her buoyant courage ... an Anne with a 
crushed passion for domesticity that kept her hands at work 
above exquisite soft fabrics. . . . Above all it was not 

that somewhat prosy Anne who pointed her unwavering 
principles with quotations from long-dead philosophers and 
practiced a clear materialism that thought first of physical 
welfare and denied one the enervating luxury of tears. 
What was the real Anne, after all? Had Barbara ever so 
much as caught a glimpse of her? She twisted away from 
the window impatiently and looking up, saw Geoffrey in the 
doorway. 

“ Well . . . Bag of Bones,” he said, “ I hear you’ve 

done with sickness.” 

“ I can sit up for sixteen hours,” she said. As he kissed 
her she had a breath of outdoor freshness, his firm, cold 
cheek touching hers. “ And yesterday I walked around 
the block.” 

“Astounding adventure.” He laughed at her. “And I 
can take you away next week.” 

His eyes were seeking hers and hers shifted away to¬ 
ward a narrow mirror hanging above a table. Her hair 
had been cut and hung softly bobbed, thinning her face. 
Her lips were a startling splash of color in its pallor and 
her eyes were big and dark by reason of the blue shadows 
underneath. She had a shiver of repulsion at that girl 


213 


ST. AGATHA’S 

. . . Barbara Hale . . . and the thought of going 

out of this familiar room with the stranger who claimed 
the right to take her with such certainty. He had slipped 
out of his coat and was sitting in a big chair close to her 
dormer throne. He fitted into Anne’s environment rather 
better than Ruddy ever had. One could forget its plain¬ 
ness and the worn edge of the Chesterfield and the smells 
that would come up through the dumb-waiter shaft. . . . 

“ Where are you going to take me ? ” she asked in a still 
voice. 

“ Home. Out to Wynville. They’re expecting you.” 

“ You’ve told them, then.” 

“ Last night. I wish I’d gone straight to them in the 
beginning.” 

“ Or not at all. It might have been better to have waited. 
After all it’s our own affair.” 

“ I’m not so sure.” As he paused she thought again of the 
red volume with its succinct histories of human life and 
of the three . . . Martha Storrs, Dorothea Geoffrey, 

Barbara Fallows, whom the Hales had chosen. She felt 
that she knew what he meant when he said, “ I’m not sure 
that any marriage is one’s own affair. I’ve thought a good 
bit about that these four months, Barbara. The thing hap¬ 
pened so . . . unexpectedly. As if Destiny had picked 
us up and slipped us into the same box.” 

“ Box is good.” 

“ I don’t get used to it.” 

“ I know.” 

“ How much do you remember of that night at the res¬ 
taurant?” Geoffrey asked curiously. “You were so dread¬ 
fully ill. . . . Do you remember the things we talked 
about ? ” 

She glanced away out of the window. “You’re trying 
to save my face for me, aren’t you, Geoff? I can remember 
that I asked you to marry me . . . begged you.” 

“ I don’t mean that. Afterward, when it came to the 
point, you said you didn’t care.” 

But she shook her head, struggling with a deep apathy, 


214 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

an unconcern that numbed all her feeling. She did not 
remember and she did not want to remember. Geoffrey 
was leaning forward looking steadily at her face. 

“ When I picked you up,” he said slowly, “ and carried 
you out to the taxicab . . . and held you all the way 

to the hospital with your head against my shoulder, I knew 
that if I left things as they were, I'd have spoiled every¬ 
thing. I ... I had to marry you, Barbara. You were 
so close to the edge that it seemed the only thing to be done. 
I was afraid more than anything that there would be only 
a little while that I could have you, that I could feel 
you belonged to me and take care of you. Are you 
sorry? ” 

“ Sorry ? ” 

“ That I married you? Out of hand like that?” 

“ No.” 

“ You said you didn’t care,” Geoffrey said again. 

She hadn’t cared. She had come to the point where hope 
lay only in change, in a complete break with the past and 
a plunge into the future. 

“ But I do care,” she said gently, and watched his smile 
flash across his brown face. “ We’ve the job of disproving 
that old adage about marrying in haste and repenting at 
leisure, haven’t we ? Do you think we can ? ” 

Geoffrey laughed a little . . . caressing laughter. 

“ Do we need to waste our time debating that ? I read 
somewhere once that marriage was a holy sacrament but 
that it didn’t drop down from Heaven ready-made. Even 
if we’d known each other all our lives we’d not be very 
experienced in marriage. You have to face it as a fact, 
something more than just a feeling, and labor for the grace 
of it. It’s like . . . anything that’s big, like art, like 

a career, like success. We’re going to work it out, Bar¬ 
bara.” 

“You have been thinking, haven’t you?” And she 
thought that it was unfair for him to have held himself to 
thinking of the future while she had been thinking only of 
the past. Strange to sit there with her husband, discussing a 


ST. AGATHA’S 


215 


marriage that seemed to her an accident. Geoffrey meant 
that it was to last apparently, always, all their lives. It was 
to be their life . . . that marriage. Her life was no 

longer her own but merged with his. It was to be spent 
where he chose to spend his own, in the house he provided, 
circumscribed by his income and his environment. His life 
was to shape hers, his choices, his health, his success, his 
failures. She would have only what was his. She would be 
shut away alone with him in the four walls of a 
house. . . . 

“ Barbara, darling, don’t look so terrified. Bar¬ 
bara . . .” 

She relaxed a little. The warmth of his hand holding 
hers touched her with peace. She recalled that she had 
liked his hands from the first, trusted them. 

After a moment she asked, “ What do you do, exactly, 
Geoffrey ? ” 

“ I’m with my father on the farm.” 

“ Oh,” Barbara said rather flatly. A farm. What use 
modern drama and Victorian poetry on a farm? 

“ A stock-farm,” Geoffrey explained. “ We feed a lot 
of western cattle. . . . There’s a tiny house across the 

dooryard from the big one, the original farmhouse built 
I don’t know how many years ago. Dad had it fixed up 
for my grandmother and she lived there for years when 
we were kids growing up.” 

“ Martha Storrs ? I found her name in Who’s 
Who.” 

“ His mother. Her things are stored there . . . 

things she brought from the east when she came. I spoke 
to the folks last night and arranged about it. We’ve taken 
it over on a two-year lease. After that, we could buy a 
place near by perhaps, if things went well with us. See 
me ? ” He made a rapid gesture and grinned at her cheer¬ 
fully. “Young married man, becoming a householder. 
Strange sensation, Barbara.” 

“ Geoffrey.” 

“ Well?” 


216 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ Wouldn’t it be better if I ... if I stayed on here 
for a bit ? Easier for you ? ” 

A dull red crept up under his clear skin. “ It would 
. . . cost a good deal here, if we played fair. More 

than at Wynville. We’ve got to think about the money this 
winter, girl-dear. Life isn’t going to be exactly princely.” 

“ We’re in debt?” 

“ Pretty deep,” 

“ For the doctors, you mean, and the hospital ? ” 

“ And cheap enough so long as you came through safe, 
Bag-o’-Bones. You’re never to think of it.” 

“ But you didn’t have to pay full expenses, Geoffrey 
. . . or the specialists. Anne could have fixed things, 

pulled some wires. . . .” 

“ Hardly sporting, that,” Geoffrey said stiffly . . . 

too stiffly, it seemed to Barbara, who having no emotions 
over money herself could never see why people grew so 
dignified frequently when it was discussed. Anne’s strong 
feeling on the subject had always seemed absurd; and here 
was Geoffrey anything but casual. Why should he be of¬ 
fended if she lived at St. Agatha’s? She had always lived 
at St. Agatha’s. 

“ You know I’ve a little money of my own, Geoff, so I 
wouldn’t burden you. And I could work till we were out 
of debt. Anne would love having me.” 

“ It won’t do, Barbara. I can’t have that.” But he came 
and put his arms about her, holding her close and his voice 
was inexpressibly gentle. “ You see . . . I’ve had my 

interview with Anne.” 

“ Geoffrey.” 

“ The night I came to see about bringing you here, I 
talked with her. We couldn’t pretend that typhoid wasn’t 
serious. We didn’t even dare move you for days. I 
told her what had happened, then. I told her I’d married 
you.” 

“ And she took it hard ? ” 

“ She took it hard,” Geoffrey said grimly, “ just as my 
mother took it and for the same reason. They hate the 


ST. AGATHA’S 217 

secrecy and the haste and the . . . ruthlessness of it. 
Your Anne was game, but it hurt her.” 

Barbara was too astonished to speak. She had not 
thought of hurting Anne. She had not known that she 
had. Anne asked no questions, made no comments, accept¬ 
ing marriage, apparently, as the most natural in the course 
of human events. She had spoken of Geoffrey now and 
then, with the brusqueness that humorously took count of 
that ghostly jealousy she felt for those whom Barbara 
loved, but she assumed that Barbara loved him. Her 
energies were put to the task of bringing her through ty¬ 
phoid. Without Anne, Barbara Hale would not have sur¬ 
vived. Anne's skill and incessant care had saved her. But 
that was like Anne, all of it. You came to take that self¬ 
lessness for granted. 

It was like Anne, too, to agree with Geoffrey. She was 
not given to laboring with facts. Married people, she 
pointed out, should live together. 

“ Any quantity don’t,” Barbara argued perversely. 
“ One’s own life comes first these days. Women don’t pre¬ 
tend to submerge themselves meekly in marriage any 
more, Anne-dear. If you care for yourself as an indi¬ 
vidual . . .” 

“ Do you care for yourself as an individual ? ” Anne asked 
quietly. “ I’ve wondered. What would you do if you 
stayed ? ” 

“ Work. Until I’d made up a little what I’ve cost Geof¬ 
frey these four months. He did let himself in for a lot, 
Anne. And quite unexpectedly. . . . 

“ I don’t know why he didn’t bring you straight to St. 
Agatha’s in the first place,” Anne fretted. “ Why did he 
take you to that other hospital? It wasn’t any nearer.” 

But Barbara didn’t know. She said, “ What can I do on 
a farm? Here, I could be of some use. And I could 
go out any week-end Geoff liked. Isn’t it a good plan, 
Anne ? ” 

Anne shook her head, her fingers flying over the froth of 
batiste and lace filling her lap. “You don’t realize at all 


218 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

how ill you’ve been. You can’t work, my dear. You’ll be 
a year just getting back your strength.” 

A blank little pause followed. Then Barbara said quite 
casually, “ That does rather settle things, doesn’t it? Want 
it or not, I can see that I shall be with Mr. Hale this 
winter.” 

“ Why did you marry him,” Anne asked, “ if you didn’t 
want to be with him ? ” 

“ Oh, Anne. Marry him ... I had to marry him 
or go under.” 

“ Go under ? Go under f ” 

“ You see . . . I’d met Ruddy again. I’m not cer¬ 
tain of myself all the time as you are, darling. I remember 
I was dreadfully afraid I’d run back to Ruddy if he wanted 
me, and I didn’t want to. Some little part of me held out 
though it was only a very little part . . . and there 

was Geoff telling me he cared about me. Marriage settles 
things, you know. People rail about it but mostly they 
respect it. I’d been drifting rudderlessly so long, getting 
nowhere, I wanted a haven, I suppose.” 

“ So you drifted into a marriage with Geoffrey Hale,” 
Anne said harshly. “ You had no right to do that. You’ve 
only laid up trouble for yourself. Is life really so purpose¬ 
less? Haven’t you any plans for living that you had to 
drift? Have you no interests ... no aims . . . 

no work?” When Barbara made no answer, she went on 
speaking in detached sentences, fragments snipped roughly 
from the fabric of her thought. “ I’ve been afraid of 
this. There’s something wrong somewhere. Freedom 
isn’t working out. . . . When you think how women 
for a hundred years have wanted what you have and gone 
through sacrifice and pain and unhappiness so that some¬ 
time the doors would open and other women would step 
out into the world . . . free, it doesn’t seem fair. It 
isn’t fair that you should take your freedom and drift with 
it. It doesn’t mean enough. . . . You’re modern 

enough to claim all the privileges other women have won 
for you and you’ve all this arid knowledge. ■. . . The 


219 


ST. AGATHA’S 

trouble is that you stress desire and the mood of the mo¬ 
ment as if character didn’t matter. You think that's old- 
fashioned. For you only the emotions matter, only your 
emotions. You never think things through .” 

One might have expected an accusation like that from 
Anne. Barbara’s mouth curled a little. 

“You’re rather disappointed in me, aren’t you?” 

“ I’ve a sense of . . . frustration,” Anne said in her 
controlled voice. “ I try to tell myself that the frustration 
of human plans is the most common of human experiences. 
But it doesn’t comfort me. To have these things happen¬ 
ing to you .” The hard look settled at the corners of her 
mouth. For the first time in her life she said . . . 

savagely, “You owed me something. You owed it to me 
to make the best of yourself.” 

“ And now, it’s too late for that.” 

A spasm of tenderness crossed Anne’s set face. “ Oh, 
Barbara, how young you are,” she said. 

When, after a moment, she stood up abruptly and went 
away, Barbara turned toward the window, facing in its 
burnished blackness the illusion of the lighted room, shin¬ 
ing there like a transparency. She knew now, better than 
Geoffrey, how deeply Anne was hurt. And there grew 
slowly in her mind the intolerable thought that, so far as 
Anne Linton was concerned, she might just as well have 
married Ruddy. 

In the end, she had done the very thing that had seemed 
so monstrous when Ruddy proposed it. Why had she? 
Why did Anne matter less than she had five years back? 
Had she, Barbara, grown callous, less delicately fine ? 
Probably. Still, that wasn’t all the answer. She had mar¬ 
ried Geoffrey Hale who was almost a stranger . . . 

and all the time she might as well have married Ruddy in 
the first place. She could not have hurt Anne any worse 
and they would have had the years together, gay years 
glorious with their youth. 

The curious thing was that while she recognized herself 
as Geoffrey’s wife, Ruddy seemed as much as ever an in- 


220 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


tegral part of her. Their memories, their laughter, the 
heaped-up joy that they had shared, remained, vivid as they 
had ever been, essential factors in her life. That much of 
him was hers; and it was both a very little and a great deal. 


XIV 


maple hill 

I 

The Hale farmhouse stood on a sharp knoll, crowned 
with maples and carpeted with soft turf. From the road a 
steep angling flight of steps built from stone, rose to the 
knoll’s crest where a small square porch, its white pillars 
contrasting with the faded scarlet of the brick wall, looked 
out on a curve of the river which, just there, was like a 
wide and quiet pool, flecked with brown shadows and hold¬ 
ing the molten reflection of the sun, faintly golden, in its 
olive depths. 

The house itself was old and comfortable, sunny rather 
than dark, with wide shallow stairs. In the L-shaped room 
from which the stairway lifted, there was a huge fireplace 
where logs blazed and crackled against the chill of fall. 
Above the flames hung the single picture in the room, the 
portrait of a Revolutionary soldier, some Hale, Barbara 
decided, in buff and blue; and there were old books on the 
low white shelves and an old piano with an ebony case in 
the angle of the stairway. Between the long front windows 
was a tall secretary made of rosewood and at the far end 
of the room where the bare twigs of a maple tapped against 
the window, a bowl of late chrysanthemums stood on a 
narrow walnut table. 

Standing on the threshold of that room, Barbara fancied 
that a peculiar stillness settled upon it, something more than 
the hush of the November afternoon, something to be 
summed up in the slightest impressions . . . the sound 

of hurrying footsteps, a door closed in the hall above, the 
sudden ceasing of voices that were talking somewhere. 


222 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

She stood close to Geoffrey feeling his arm slipped through 
hers, his fingers pressing into her wrist, and waited while 
his mother came slowly down the stairs, one claw-like little 
hand slipping ahead of her on the banister. 

“ So this is Barbara,” she said gravely from the lowest 
step, but as she left the newel-post and came close she 
looked up at her with something more than criticalness in 
her black eyes. “ You are ill, child. Why didn’t Geoffrey 
say how ill you’d been ? ” 

“ I have been,” Barbara said. “ I’m quite all right now.” 

“ Hated to talk about it,” said Geoff briefly. “ Did they 
finish up the cleaning, Moth’ ? ” 

“ The women left two hours ago. And the plumber. 
Father did have the new boiler put in for you after all. 
And the kitchen painted.” 

“ You’ll be raising my rent.” 

“ Oh, Geoffrey.” Flippancy made her impatient. “ Things 
are quite as Granny left them, Barbara, and inconvenient 
enough I’m afraid you’ll think after a city flat. The cur¬ 
tains won’t bear even one more washing.” She frowned, a 
thin line deepening between her brows, obviously regretting 
the curtains. Their forced talk dropped for a moment and 
Dorothea sat silently looking at Barbara. She seemed sur¬ 
prised when Mark came in with his father. 

“ Did you meet Mark in town? ” she asked Barbara. 

“ He was at the station with Geoffrey.” 

She had seen them standing together when she came up 
the stairs. Geoff had swung about and kissed her and Mark 
had kissed her, too, saying something about being aware of 
her nearness as of a young orchard in May. Which was 
like Mark. But the encounter had left her breathless. 
Geoffrey’s kiss had been unexpected and she felt suddenly 
embarrassed at her new relationship with Mark, at Geof¬ 
frey’s air of possession and her own role of bride. A wave 
of confusion went through her and she flushed hotly under 
Dorothea’s eyes. “ We came out together, the three of us,” 
she explained. 

“ The three of you,” Dorothea repeated. “ I wasn’t ex- 


MAPLE HILL 223 

pecting that. Will someone . . . now that we are quite 
settled . . . tell Christine we are ready for tea ? ” 

Tea ... of which the men partook humorously in 
deference, it developed, to a persistent tradition of Bangor, 
Maine . . . gave Barbara an opportunity of eyeing the 

Hales at her leisure. For a week past she had been think¬ 
ing of them as the Family and had experienced moments of 
sheer panic at the unity implied by that term, but among 
them, her dread lessened. The older faces seemed already 
familiar, having irregular resemblances to Mark and Geof¬ 
frey as traceable as Mark's and Geoffrey's own indefinable 
likeness to each other. 

Cyrus Hale was a man past sixty, big and proud of his 
bigness, practical and efficient and proud of these, too, as 
of some final expression of achievement. His gray hair 
thinned a weathered, clean-shaven Yankee face, with 
shrewd eyes and a mouth held firmly at the corners like 
Geoffrey's. All his movements had a peculiar swiftness and 
certainty as if he were accustomed to have the machinery 
of life run smoothly under his competent hands; but his 
voice was mellow with a pleasant and singularly gentle un¬ 
dertone. Beyond him, on the other side of the hearth, 
Dorothea sat erect in a high-backed chair behind the tea- 
tray. The firelight flickered over her small, faded face and 
huge shadows dancing on the wall behind her made her 
seem delicate and fragile by contrast. But there was, never¬ 
theless, an effect of pride and authority about her. 

Mark was like his father in voice and expression but he 
lacked the older man’s serene vigor and his coloring was all 
wrong. His eyes and bony hands were like Dorothea's al¬ 
though, on the whole, he was not like Dorothea. It was 
Geoffrey, frankly his father’s son in build and feature who 
carried upon him that look of inherent will. They had the 
same quick, impatient speech, the same direct gaze. And 
he was Dorothea's favorite, if she permitted herself the 
thought of favoritism. Time after time, she turned simply 
to look at him. 

The talk dragged a trifle. It centered at first mainly 


224 THE ELAME OF HAPPINESS 

about Anne with a sprinkle of anecdotes concerning Anne’s 
teaching and the buying of a bicycle, almost the first in 
Wynville, on which she had coasted down the hills, her 
immense sleeves ballooning behind her. Obviously, to 
Dorothea, Anne figured as something of a rebel. . . . 

But gradually, as if they understood Barbara’s weariness, 
they left her alone and talked of their work, of the harvest, 
the sale of Holsteins, their wheat, the increasing value of 
certain acreage, intent talk, never slip-shod. An ancient 
servant moved in and out bringing fresh cakes and as she 
sat, drinking her tea slowly, it occurred to Barbara that the 
life of that household could be pictured pouring through 
the room as the sunlight poured through it. One felt it in 
their talk, their quick, simple phrases, their figures of speech 
. . . a life that held hard labor, accepted and accom¬ 

plished, and content when labor was done, a life ruthless 
in its demands and rich in return, quiet, sustaining. “ But 
never the life for me,” she thought. “ Anne might have 
fitted in here, but I’m different. I’m not like this. Oh, 
I am in an unholy mess. I don’t even know what to 
say.” 

She began to feel that it was necessary to say something. 
Her silence bothered Geoffrey. He put down his cup and 
stood up impatiently, moving up and down the room with a 
red setter at his heels. Barbara saw him glowering back at 
her over his shoulder. After a spasmodic sentence or two 
which did not bridge the chasm, Mark suggested that she 
play something and Dorothea murmured politely. 

“ Though it doesn’t matter what, in the least,” Barbara 
said to herself as she went to the piano and struck an aim¬ 
less chord or two. “ They won’t listen. People never do.” 

She struck boldly into Rachmaninoff’s Prelude and the 
first ringing bar quickened her pulses. By the stillness in 
the room behind her, she knew that they were listening and 
thought of that other time when she had played, weaving a 
gauzy web of music about herself and feeling that she was 
a woman, dominant, a prophetess. She felt like anything 
but a prophetess, now, but she still knew a keen delight in 


MAPLE HILL 225 

the power of her thin fingers. The andante rose, pure and 
ineffably sweet. . . . 

Mark sat where his eyes were on her as she played and 
she smiled at him a little, her look lingering in his. He was 
her friend, almost the best friend she had ever owned, with 
a kindliness that went back years. It was fun playing for 
Mark. But she felt disappointed that Dorothea of them all 
had only meagre praise for her playing. Dorothea hardly 
seemed to notice that the music had ended. She sat stiffly 
in her chair, frowning into the fire, her lips pursed as if 
her reverie were not quite pleasant. 


II 

“ Take a look-see/’ Geoffrey said as he unlocked the door 
of the cottage, “ while I go down and interview the boiler. 
You’ll find that your nap didn’t make the afternoon too 
short to see it. It won’t take you five minutes to ransack 
everything.” 

It didn’t. The house was absurd, set at the curve of the 
drive below the knoll, facing the river. The front door 
opened directly into a narrow living-room, a gracious 
little place with things in it that gave Barbara a thrill 
of happy surprise . . . dark, waxed furniture, quaint 

candlesticks, faded chintzes hanging in straight folds 
at the sides of the prim, square-paned windows. Behind 
it was a kitchen smelling of fresh paint and from the square 
entry between the two, a walled stair led to what had been 
the loft, where there were two bedrooms, small places with 
sloping ceilings, and back of them, over the kitchen, a bath¬ 
room and a large linen closet, suggestive faintly of lavender. 

When she came down again, Geoffrey was lighting the 
lamp. He seemed to fill the room, looming over the table 
like some monstrous shadow. Barbara caught herself won¬ 
dering what he was doing there, he seemed so much a 
stranger; and remembered with a slight shock that he be¬ 
longed there, that it was she who was the stranger, de¬ 
pendent on him. 


226 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ Did you like me this afternoon, Geoff ? ” she asked as 
he put back the chimney. 

“ Like you ? ” he looked up sharply. “ Why wouldn’t I 
like you ? What makes you say a thing like that ? ” 

“ Because it’s the thing that’s uppermost all the time in 
my mind. I want you to like what I do. Wouldn’t be very 
sporting of me, would it, never to try to please you ? ” She 
spoke lightly and he came around the table and stood be¬ 
side her, squeezing her arm. 

“ Silly,” he said. “ Like this house ? ” 

“ Of course.” 

“ It isn’t much of a place. Think you’ll be . . . con¬ 

tented here, with me ? ” 

“ Of course.” 

His arms went around her suddenly. His lips went down 
on hers, hurting her unmercifully. She offered no resistance 
and lay crushed against him, hearing the heavy pounding 
of his heart, her hands resting on his shoulder; but when 
he took his lips away, she put the back of her hand against 
her mouth. Geoffrey laughed. 

“ Rough, was I?” 

“ Weren’t you, rather? ” (“ It is like that,” she thought. 

“ That is what it is like.”) “ I don’t care. . . 

“ ‘ I don’t care,’ ” he mocked her joyously. “ The don’t 
caringest thing, Barbara is. * I’m going to kiss you on the 
mouth ’ . . . she says she doesn’t care. 4 Barbara, 

proud lady, will you marry me?’ . . . and she says she 

doesn’t care. It’s like a refrain. * Come share my loaf and 
jug of wine and sing beside me in the wilderness * . . . 

and she says she doesn’t care. . . .” 

She smiled back at him. He was so straight and strong. 
His arms around her seemed like a magic ring of safety. 
She slipped her hands across his shoulders, clinging to him. 
Geoffrey drew her close with a shaken laugh. “ Sweetheart 
. . . my sweetheart and my wife,” he whispered and 

drew back just in time to see the miserable stricken look on 
her face. After a moment, as if the enormous injustice of 
that look on a woman’s face struck him, he dropped his 


MAPLE HILL 227 

arms and stepped back. “ What on earth’s the matter? 
Barbara . . .” 

She felt cold, miserably shaken. She made an effort to 
regain her poise but it was useless. She could only shake 
her head and walk drearily to the window, leaning her 
forehead against the glass and looking out into the yard, 
velvety gray in the dusk. The thing had happened and 
there was nothing she could say. If she were to explain 
that the sound of a formula, a mere phrase had sent that 
shiver through her, the only possible result would be further 
and more detailed explanation. Geoffrey was not a man to 
be lied to. But he had no part in the past, in its joys or its 
hurts. Silence was her only refuge. And an inevitable 
feminine murmur about a headache. 

“ I’m a clumsy boor,” Geoffrey said. “ I keep forgetting 
you’ve been ill.” 

“ Don’t,” said Barbara. To herself, she thought, “ I’m 
deceiving him. And hurting him, too. I wouldn’t have him 
hurt for anything. Oh . . . damn it.” Pain in any¬ 

one seemed a dreadful thing, something that must not hap¬ 
pen. She turned awkwardly and came to stand beside him, 
her fingers twisting the fraternity pin on his vest. “ I’m a 
silly thing, Geoff. Give me this, will you? I’d like to 
wear it ... by marital right, so to speak.” 

“Token of your . . . surrender?” he asked in a 

queer voice and looking up as he unpinned the emblem, she 
caught an expression of faint derision on his face. “ Din¬ 
ner is at seven and mother is punctilious about it. Shall we 
go over ? ” 

“ I hurt him more because he sees through me,” Barbara 
thought as she trudged beside him up across the knoll. 
“But . . . surrender?” 

Ill 

She was not unhappy. She had no white moments, no 
high happiness such as had pulsed through her in the past; 
but she had not expected that. The deadening apathy of 
her illness enveloped her like the cowl of a black robe. 


228 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

She dwelt in its shadow. Nothing mattered. Nothing hap¬ 
pened that she cared about. The days went by one after 
another. It was something of a surprise to find that the 
changes November wrought on the earth did touch her with 
a simple pleasure. She watched them from the doorstep of 
her house . . . brown days, gray days, wild geese fly¬ 

ing high in a black wedge, a clump of wild aster blooming 
sturdily in a sheltered nook, spits of snow out of a close 
cloudy sky, blurred blue distances and shadows gathering 
at the end of a white road. . . . 

At the core of what feeling she had was always the 
vague wish to please Geoffrey. She knew that he was very 
good to her and she told herself that if one could not be 
happy, one could at least be gallant. But his arms about 
her left her chilled. His ardors, his sudden, hot, boyish 
kisses puzzled her a little. She said “ yes ” when he asked 
her if she loved him and “ yes ” to his further anxious 
questions as to her happiness, and she tried to make her 
answers true. She did care for him, more than anyone; 
and she could not have put into words what it was she 
wanted, but it was anything but love. Love seemed a 
dreadful bondage. She disliked its hot narrow intimacy. 
She wanted something clearer. She wanted to be free, un¬ 
der no compulsions, never tortured by self-questioning. 

She lay awake sometimes at night, hearing Geoffrey’s 
breathing, feeling the weight of his arm across her body, 
trying to believe, for her own pride’s sake, that in this un¬ 
expected marriage there was a hidden tenderness finer than 
the passion any man might have for any woman, but she 
did not believe it. Ruddy had taught her all she needed to 
know of men and the others, the partners of the mad year 
before, had served to point the lessons she had learned of 
him. She had very little respect for any man’s love. Once 
when Geoffrey talked shyly of its rapture, its deep satis¬ 
faction, she surprised him . . . and herself . . . 

by irrepressible laughter. She had no active wish to mock 
at love, but she hated talk about its joys as much as she 
hated the thought of its ugliness and pain. 


229 


MAPLE HILL 

The point was that feeling had ebbed in her. Hate and 
joy and tumult seemed all to have been deadened by the 
poison of sickness. For weeks she had had no tears as she 
had no laughter nor the emotional response she had always 
known when some phrase of music or perfect line of prose 
welled into her thoughts. Everything . . . impres¬ 
sions, thoughts, physical sensations . . . the old nip of 

hunger, the keen delight in the shock of a cold shower, the 
zest of sport, had lost their edge. It was enough at first 
to be free of fever and dizziness, to accomplish the small 
tasks of her household routine; and beyond that nothing 
really mattered. One gray day followed another. 

IV 

In homely ways the Hales were very kind to her. 
Dorothea, as competent at the elemental stuff of housekeep¬ 
ing as her husband was at his affairs, took Barbara under 
her tutelage, sent over hot rolls and fluffy cakes on her 
own baking days and constantly raided her stores of pre¬ 
served fruits and vegetables and jellies for the table over 
at the Little House. But in spite of her gratitude for that 
perfect kindliness, Barbara evaded Geoffrey’s mother if it 
were possible. It was evasion rather than avoidance. An 
hour alone with her left her dismayed. 

She had never known anyone like Dorothea Hale. She 
was not like Anne. Public opinion was unimportant to 
Anne, whose insistence was on inner integrity and the fine 
scrupulous distinctions of one's individual code; and 
Dorothea reverenced Tradition and the traditional conven¬ 
tions. She was one of those women, immune to the dangers 
of analysis, whose lives are devoted to maintaining the state 
into which it has pleased God to call them. She set up 
Lares and Penates of order and custom, having a horror 
of anything outside the established order as of something 
uncouth and terrible, threatening what she held dear. She 
might not, for politeness sake, be as outspokenly cruel as 
Anne but she could never have her tenderness, either. 
Geoffrey’s marriage fretted her. 


230 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“Wouldn't it have been better to have waited?” She 
had come for the afternoon and her eyes, lifted from a 
sock she was mending for Cyrus, rested on Barbara with 
a solemnity ever so faintly tinged with question. “Of 
course, there you were ill. ... It isn’t as if you weren’t 
exactly the sort of girl we wanted Geoff to marry . . . 

a pretty girl and educated, capable, Mr. Hale says, of a fine 
spiritual comradeship. We’re glad he fell in love with you, 
Barbara. We began to think he would never find anybody. 
. . . But marrying you, out of hand, when you were 

ill, seems unlike him in a way. He’d been in love with you 
a long time . . . head over heels in love, the two of 
you . . 

Barbara said, “Yes, indeed,” and kept her eyes away 
from the small ivory-colored face on her own handiwork. 
In spite of the best intentions, her teeth gritted slightly. 
Thousands of women since the world began had talked 
like this of marriage and men and love, saying the com¬ 
monplaces that dripped down their lips while they kept their 
hands and eyes busy with sewing. It was a formula 
recognized wherever women gathered . . . useless 

chatter. 

“ Home-keeping hearts are happiest/’ Dorothea quoted 
softly. “ Quiet hearts . . .” 

Quiet hearts. Barbara bit off her thread and put down 
her sewing. “ Hello, Geoff,” she said to her husband in the 
doorway. 

“ Hello, yourself,” Geoffrey answered as she shucked his 
coat. He loomed above her chair and a look of acrid un¬ 
derstanding passed between them, the spiritual comradeship 
Dorothea had just mentioned. His kiss, hard on her lips, 
hurt her, meaning nothing. Geoff hated kissing her before 
Dorothea. He stood back, saying something, but as if he 
were part of herself, Barbara heard his quick, shaken 
breathing through his steady voice. 

In her occasional soft moods she envied Dorothea, upon 
whose hearth the inextinguishable fires burned in miniature. 
She knew happiness. Her content with life was like a 


MAPLE HILL 231 

fragrance, like the spicy fragrance of lavender in her linens. 
And Barbara tried to imagine what it would mean to yield 
to life as Dorothea yielded, pouring everything that was 
hers into the lives of her husband and her sons. At such 
times she experienced the ancient longing for subjection that 
comes to all women now and then, the fundamental desire 
created by life and working slowly from far-off ages until 
now, to dispose life and will together in a man’s hands, ask¬ 
ing nothing of oneself beyond unquestioning devotion. 
Easier. Easier to yield. Easier to give over the restless 
seeking after an elusive self and become a woman-thing, 
obedient and docile. Infinitely easier. 

“ But wrong,” Geoffrey said hotly, when she pointed it 
out. “ That’s surrender. Surrender is always easy and it’s 
almost always wrong. If there’s a God . . .” 

“ Do you doubt there’s a God? With at least a sense of 
humor? ” 

“ Put it this way. If there is such a divine gift as in¬ 
dividuality, no human being ought to yield it. No man 
. . . nor any woman. Blasphemy, I call it. It makes 

the decentest marriage all a mockery. Possession on the 
man’s part, surrender on the woman’s and a tepid affection. 
A rotten deal.” 

So that was what he meant by surrender. 

Like Dorothea, Geoffrey filled her with a feeling of dis¬ 
may. It was pleasanter to be with Mark whose friendliness 
was like a soothing hand on hers. She grew very fond of 
Mark. He was apt to be near her when they were at Maple 
Hill, giving her a grave attention or finding small ways of 
approach, sending her a quiet glance or smile that assured 
her he was conscious of her presence. Geoffrey’s intensi¬ 
ties hurt her. Invisible chains seemed in the forging. It 
was different with Mark. 

During the winter, when he came home from Franklin 
for the week-end, the three worked together in his study. 
It had been a hall bedroom originally, a small place shelved 
at all the walls and with a desk set before the single win¬ 
dow. In flat glass cases above the shelves were specimens, 


232 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

typewritten cards with their names stuck in the frames. 
“ Bignoniacese, Jacaranda pubescens " . . . “ Punica 

granatum," “ Papaveraceae.” Mark was writing a brochure 
on belladonna. References had to be found, notes indexed; 
and Barbara helped him. 

“ Where do you find your material, Mark? What 
books ? " 

“ Not books at all. This stuff is a compilation of notes 
that Geoff has made here at Maple Hill. Practical work. 
Surely, you've heard him talk." 

“ I thought it was part of the regular farming." 

“ No. This is Geoff's own experiment. He’s using the 
low ten acres near the river. He’s a wild notion he can 
make a go of it." 

“ Can he?" 

“ I'm beginning to think he can. It will be in the ex¬ 
perimental stage for a year or two yet, but it ought to be 
showing a profit by then." 

“ How much profit ? " 

Geoffrey looked faintly hostile. He was carrying the 
work forward with an enthusiasm that obviously hurt him, 
was shy about his hopes, refused to talk, refused to estimate 
at all what the result might be in dollars and cents. He 
claimed he had no sense of duty about that. 

“ It's because I want to do it. Any profits this year go 
back into the fields. I don’t care for profits. What I mean 
is, I like it." 

“ Does it give you a thrill, Geoff? " 

“ It's putting a new job through. * The luxury of get¬ 
ting a day’s work behind one.' Check up Mark’s data on 
the soil, will you, Bag-o'-Bones." 

Barbara learned the soil by heart as Mark described it. 
Her botany, elementary as it was, served her fairly and she 
carried away the dim conviction that belladonna was some¬ 
thing like potatoes. When Mark gave her copying to do, 
her pen flew furiously over the paper. Her cheeks burned. 
Mark, she said to herself, was not in the least like Geoffrey. 
With Mark one forgot utterly that one was a woman 


MAPLE HILL 233 

. . . kissable. He was one mind and she was another. 
His was clear, limpid. 

January passed, the shadows of trees and fence-posts 
sharp against the snow that glimmered like polished lacquer 
on the fields, the blue ice of the river powdered crisply with 
white. Cyrus and Dorothea went to Florida after Christ¬ 
mas and Barbara moved over into the big house on the 
knoll. February passed. March . . . 


XV 


WOODLAWN 

I 

One day in April, Dorothea called Barbara to the tele¬ 
phone on a long distance call. It proved to be Miriam. 
She was married, she wanted Barbara to know, ten days 
ago, simply swept off her feet, though she and Paul had 
seen a lot of each other through the winter, she would 
admit. Paul? Paul Goddard. She had told Barbara all 
about him. . . . Well, anyway, she was married. She 

was full of her wedding rushed through on short notice. 
She had worn a white satin suit that would be spiffy for 
sports all summer. Wasn’t it clever of her to have thought 
of that? And Nancy, Paul’s little daughter, had been her 
only attendant. “ But I wish you could have been there, 
Babs. I’d have loved having you.” 

They had come into Chicago after a glorious three-day 
honeymoon. Miriam dilated a trifle on the honeymoon 
while Barbara sat silent, wrinkling her nose and wondering 
what the girl at the Wynville Central . . . who lived 

on the county road back of Maple Hill farm and knew 
Barbara perfectly . . . might be thinking of its details. 

“ But I hate playing around alone, Babs. When are you 
coming back to town ? ” 

“ Never, I’m afraid. We’re living here, two miles from 
Wynville.” 

Wynville. Miriam had heard of Wynville, a little place 
rather too far out for commuting. She was considering a 
suburb herself. Her week in town had convinced her that 
town would not do. “ Unless you have a wad of money, 
Babs, enough to stand out from the crowd. A man like 
Paul can’t camp out in a cheap place the way we did and 


WOODLAWN 235 

make a joke of it; and a hotel is too impersonal, and com¬ 
mon to boot. No background for one’s personality. I’ve 
a corking scheme up my sleeve. I’m coming out to Wyn- 
ville one of these days and talk it over.” 

She came the next Saturday. Barbara heard her voice, 
smooth and amused, at the door. “ You don’t live here , 
Geoff-darling?” and Geoff’s, “Don’t you like it, Mrs. 
Goddard?” before they crowded through the narrow door, 
Geoff and Miriam and Myrrh’s husband ... a tall 
man with a sensitive fair face and tired eyes. 

“ I certainly hadn’t pictured Babs in a place like this. 
You’ll admit it’s a bit startling.” 

“ I’ll admit a mansion would suit her beautifully. You 
always call her Babs, do you?” 

“You mean you don't call her Babs? That’s funny.” 

“Is it?” 

“You didn’t know her very well, did you? Everyone 
always has.” 

She scored there. Geoffrey’s face flushed. “ I call her a 
Bag-o'-Bones. I’m nothing if not a realist, Mrs. Goddard.” 

“ You poor dear,” Miriam said tenderly. She slipped off 
her furs and rolled her gloves away from her plump wrists. 
They had taken the noon train out from town and luckily 
found Mark whom Geoffrey had met at Wynville in a duck 
of a car. “ I’ve a special reason for coming to-day. I’m 
going to carry you off with me after lunch, Babs. If you 
could commandeer that little car your husband had . . .” 

“ But the car is my mother’s,” Geoffrey said suavely. 
“ She’s waiting lunch for us up at the house, now.” 

“ Which will certainly upset Paul,” Paul’s wife averred. 
“ He was determined to stop at Wynville and eat in some 
wretched little place he spied from the station. I don’t 
think I could have pushed him past it if it hadn’t been for 
Mark. And he’s been miserable all the way because his 
wife had faith in the hospitality of her friends. You aren’t 
to mind him, Babs.” 

But Barbara did mind him. He walked stiffly beside 
her 2 his stilted attempts at talk and his shyness made gro- 


236 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

tesque by Miriam’s unconcern. Under her perfunctory 
chat Barbara’s own thoughts were in turmoil. After all, it 
was not her hospitality but Dorothea’s to which Myrrh laid 
claim; and Dorothea was precise in her household arrange¬ 
ments. She could not help wondering what Geoffrey 
thought. She caught a glimmer of his grin and knew that 
he made casual play at her with the tail of his eye as he 
stood aside at the door. The sunlight falling through it 
touched his face. “ Friends of Barbara’s, moth’. Mark 
and I persuaded them to come along with us. . . 

Barbara sent Mark a grateful glance under cover of 
Dorothea’s welcome. 

“ Saturday is a gala day at Maple Hill. It’s been our 
custom to celebrate on Saturdays since the boys began go¬ 
ing away first. If they’re within reach, then, they come 
home.” 

Miriam smiled. She was suddenly at her best, her charm 
heightened by the stimulation of these new contacts, as if 
by a mechanism. But Barbara, watching her, felt that she 
was aware of Myrrh as the others, even Paul Goddard, 
could not be possibly. Her own sensibilities were sharp¬ 
ened. She had the feeling that their intimacy, their per¬ 
sonalities were on trial together. With every word she 
spoke, Miriam threw an unsparing light on Barbara. 

“ Never saw such color,” she was saying softly, touching 
the tip of a pink crocus with her finger. “ Lovelier than 
roses. Wouldn’t they light up that dingy little room of 
ours at the hotel, Paul? An apartment-hotel intrigues my 
good husband but it leaves me gasping for breath, Mrs. 
Hale. I’m not going to endure it very long. I belong out 
here where there are flowers like these. And jam. Where 
do you get such jam? ” 

“ On a farm,” Dorothea said drily, “ there is usually jam. 
One has to save the fruit.” 

“ And think of me paying scandalous prices for the tiniest 
possible jars so that Nancy can have a taste of such things 
now and then. Do you put it up for sale ? I’d love to buy 
of you. . . .” 


WOODLAWN 


237 

“ You must let me pack a basket for you . . . jam 
and crocuses” (But couldn’t she see that was what Myrrh 
wanted? That she was fingering after a gift? Was Geoff 
seeing that?) “Nancy is . . 

“ My little daughter,” Miriam said softly. “ She worries 
me, she’s such a fragile little being. It’s the city air, of 
course. Oh, yes, it is, Paul. If I’m to have the care of 
Nancy you will simply have to accept my judgment on these 
things. Else how am I to do for her, my dear ? We heard 
of a country place for sale out here . . . Woodlawn. 

If we take it, will you teach me the trick of bringing flow¬ 
ers to bloom, Mrs. Hale ? I want a riotous garden of flow¬ 
ers. I thought I’d raise them to sell, eventually . . . 

work up a special market and make a pot of money.” 

“ Between now and eventually,” Geoffrey said drily, 
“ you’d have months and years of grinding work.” 

Gracious . . . Miriam knew that, no one better. It 

was only because she was an incurable idealist that she 
seemed to leap the present and arrive at the future. She 
was one of those people with a clear vision of the realities 
. . . beauty, success. “ Success is one of the realities, 
isn’t it? There’s an art about successful living. . . .” 

In that enthusiasm Barbara felt a force and energy that she 
had never found in Miriam before. Even the indolence 
hitherto nascent in her smooth voice seemed to have van¬ 
ished. “ I want to get away from all the shams.” 

“ But Woodlawn is a plaything,” objected Cyrus Hale. 
“ It’s had four owners since it was built. Folks come out 
here thinking Wynville is a gay suburb and then they’re 
upset when they find everyone too busy making garden to 
play golf. They go away hating us. Nobody has ever 
made the place pay.” 

“ I hadn’t thought altogether about making it pay”. 
Miriam laughed back. “ When I’ve thought of Woodlawn, 
I’ve thought of . . . home. I’ve thought about Miriam 

Goddard and her garden ... a resting place for the 
spirit. I’ve thought of finding spiritual realities. . . .” 

“You can find them anywhere, can’t you?” Geoffrey 


238 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

asked. You could hear antagonism creeping into his voice. 
“ Anywhere, at least, where you want to dig for them.” 

It wasn’t, Miriam said pleasantly, an argument for which 
she had an immediate answer. Because it brought one at 
once to digging for what spiritual realities were to be found 
in a seven-by-nine room at the Loorimore hotel, and those, 
she admitted frankly, were beyond the Goddards. They 
were all thinking she wasn’t practical, weren’t they, with her 
emphasis on spiritual things? But she had gone over the 
whole thing with a friend . . . figures, upkeep costs, 

everything. “You can manage a country place on about 
the same money as a city apartment ... a little more 
if you care for dignity in living for its own sake. Babs- 
honey, think of having us less than a mile from you! Cork¬ 
ing?” 

“ Aren’t we precipitate ? ” Goddard asked. He was 
watching his wife narrowly, a fine crease between his eyes. 
“ We’ve only just heard of this house.” 

“ I have the keys . . . and an option till Saturday.” 

He stared at her triumphant face. “ But I understood 
you to say we were simply to make inquiries here, see a 
local agent. . . .” 

“ How absurd, Paul. Wasting a whole day not knowing 
where we were going nor what we expected to find. Surely 
you know I’ve more efficiency than that. No. I simply 
went to an old friend ... a corking chap who is mak¬ 
ing a big success of this sort of thing, and put the case to 
him. He said this was the very thing we wanted, this house 
at Wynville. I’d take his word before anyone’s. It was 
Dirck Gannet, Babs. You remember.” 

Barbara wondered if the blood poured into her face as 
her heart pounded. She sat still telling herself that no one 
there at the table, not Geoffrey, not even Mark or Miriam 
could possibly guess how utterly she remembered, nor what 
glints of laughter came back with that remembering. They 
all, it developed after a moment, were engaged in the busi¬ 
ness of recollection. Mark, of course, had known Ruddy 
well at Franklin. Geoffrey, with some difficulty, recalled 


239 


kWOODLAWN 

meeting him at Pinelands, “ The day I first met my wife.” 
Cyrus Hale and Paul knew of the Gannets as real-estate 
brokers. ... It did not matter at all how Barbara re¬ 
membered him. 

Miriam came back to Woodlawn, characteristically tak¬ 
ing advantage of an audience to make her point, forcing the 
issue publicly on the chance that Paul would not publicly 
protest. It was the sort of thing that left you helpless. 
“ Wait till you’ve seen the house, dear,” she said, smiling at 
him, “ before you muster all these prejudices. We’ll walk 
over after lunch.” 

“ There is no need of your walking,” said Dorothea. 
“ Geoffrey will take you in my little car.” So she had the 
car, after all. Things worked out in the end as Miriam 
wanted them. She hated walking. 

II 

Woodlawn was a Colonial house, frankly modem. In the 
diffused April sunlight it stood out against the misty green 
fields with a glistening whiteness, its blinds the green of the 
ivy that climbed up along its brick chimney. The central 
portion was two storied but there were wings, a sun-room to 
the south, a kitchen and pantry to the north, giving it a wide 
frontage and an aspect of stateliness. Barbara felt a pang 
of envy as Miriam thudded the brass knocker and slipped 
her key into the lock. Geoffrey had said once that he liked 
Colonial houses. 

The door swung open and they went through a wide hall, 
into the living room. “ Imagine our wood-fire, please, Paul,” 
Miriam said softly. “ Imagine running out of doors to see 
the smoke from our chimney. 

“ ‘ And of all man’s felicities 

The very subtlest one, say I, 

Is when for the first time, he sees 
His hearth-fire smoke against the sky.’ 


Isn’t it a pretty house ? ” 


240 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ A pretty house,” Paul conceded, and she answered that 
she had felt from the moment Dirck Gannet described it, 
they would love it. It was just the place for two dreaming 
old home-bodies such as they were going to be all their 
lives. Couldn’t he see her, a comfy housewife in a big 
white apron ? 

He said uneasily, “ But it’s at least two miles from the 
station.” 

“ More,” Geoffrey agreed. “ A long walk winter morn¬ 
ings.” 

“ Eventually, of course, we’ll have a car,” Miriam sug¬ 
gested. “ What are two miles ... or ten ... in 
a car? And there’s room for two in the garage.” 

She did not answer Paul’s objection that a car was 
problematical and the winter certain. She led them up¬ 
stairs through wide sunny bedrooms to a luxurious sleeping- 
porch, down-stairs through a glistening, white kitchen to 
the cellar with its furnace room and vegetable room and 
laundry. “ A home, Paul,” she cried when they stood 
rather uncertainly about the fireplace again. “A home to 
hold us all our lives and our children after us. Heavenly 
prospect.” 

“ I wish I could give it to you,” he said. He looked har¬ 
assed, embarrassed. Barbara was absurdly sorry for him. 

“ You’re going to,” Miriam laughed back. “ Don’t be 
indecisive, dear.” 

“ I’m afraid it’s over our heads.” 

“ Paul. Nonsense. As if anything could be over one’s 
head that satisfies one’s spirit. That point of view is just 
an evidence of the self-depreciation we talked about in bed 
last night. You do need me and my golden dreams to help 
you conquer it, poor boy. Why, we fit here. It’s exactly 
the sort of house for the sort of people we are. Don’t think 
I can’t live up to it. I can splendidly.” 

His mouth twisted in a wry smile, “ You haven’t once 
mentioned the price.” 

“ I didn’t ask it,” Miriam said. “ I wanted to see the place 
first. If I didn’t like it, the price was unimportant.” 


WOODLAWN 


241 


“ It's bound to be steep.” 

“ Oh, I don’t think so. Dirck seemed to feel it was quite 
all right. And he told me that for us he’d shave his 
commission.” 

“ I could hardly permit that,” Goddard said after a mo¬ 
ment’s uncomfortable pause. “ It’s out of the question, 
I’m afraid. Make up your mind not to want it too much, 
my dear. In a year or two, perhaps, we’ll find something. 
We simply haven’t the right to a place like this, yet.” 

She stood back a little and clasped her hands, smiling 
persistently into his desperate face. “ At least you needn’t 
force on our friends the discussion of our sordid econ¬ 
omies,” she said gravely, but her voice was smooth without 
a flicker of irritation. Barbara remembered that she had 
never seen Miriam ill-humored. 

“ Why should you ? ” Geoffrey inquired as they drove 
home from the train. “ She knows she’ll get what she 
wants. She’ll have Woodlawn. I wish she couldn’t. I 
don’t care for the buxom lady, myself.” 

“ Which is vastly unfair of you,” Barbara said coolly. 
“ Myrrh is my most intimate friend. You’ve no right to 
think you can judge her.” 

“ But I have judged her,” Geoffrey said cheerfully. 
“ Marriage with that woman has a taint of prostitution. 
She’s in it for something she can gain. . . .” 

It was unfortunate that Barbara had the sharpened and 
critical sensitiveness that a word roused into activity. 
“ Prostitution,” she said to herself. “ What would he think 
of me?” 


Ill 

The two horses stood tied to a single tree, a white oak 
close to the Woodlawn gate-post. As Barbara passed, their 
eyes, full and brilliant, explored her and their heads turned; 
they watched her quietly, necks arched and ears pricked 
forward. 

“ Paul’s come down with Myrrh,” she thought. Hitherto 
she had come alone and it had been Barbara, not Miriam’s 


242 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

husband, who stood with her in the sunny rooms and listened 
to her plans. Those hours with Miriam were not wholly 
pleasant. It seemed unfair that she should have this lovely 
place for her beginnings of life and that, at the same time, 
Barbara was forced to endure the shabbiness and discom¬ 
fort of the Little House; but she had a liking for the beau¬ 
ties of a house and its furnishings as intense as it was im¬ 
personal. She would have walked much further than the 
half-mile which lay between her home and Miriam's for the 
sake of looking at the new things that came out daily from 
the city, or of standing contemplatively in those empty, 
finely-proportioned rooms. 

Already the place had taken on a look of life. The day 
was cold and almost sunless with a faint light gleaming 
behind thin clouds; but the new leafage of the trees gave a 
delicate, blurred beauty to the earth, and across the river a 
field of young wheat made a pale stain of green so soft it 
merged into gray, giving the distance the delicacy of 
silver. The door was ajar and Barbara pushed it open with¬ 
out ringing. From a tall mirror leaning against the wall, 
her own reflection approached, a girl with thin cheeks col¬ 
ored by the wind but with faint shadows still beneath the 
eyes. She was wearing a suit of brown jersey with stock¬ 
ings of wool to match her heavy brown oxfords, a wool 
scarf of brown and orange and a tarn pulled down on her 
forehead. She looked incredibly like the little Barbara of 
long ago who had fancies of princesses and princes and of 
troubadours singing at the foot of a tall tower. 

Steps sounded along the floor of a distant room and she 
heard the subdued murmur of voices. The next moment 
she was struck by the sound of laughter, a man’s laughter 
lusty and with a note of ribaldry. She swayed a little, her 
body twisting toward the railing, her mind denying for an 
instant the certainty that assailed it. (There wasn’t any 
sound, you ass.) But the next, that laughter came again 
and she was possessed by the fear that she was going to 
cry out. As she turned to run down the stairs, Barbara 
heard Myrrh’s step in the hall just above her. 


WOODLAWN 243 

“ Oh, it's you/* Miriam said. She stood unsmiling, tap¬ 
ping a riding whip on the banister. She was in knickers 
and a straight riding coat fitted snugly over her plump 
shoulders. After a moment she said without turning her 
head, “ Dirck, here’s Barbara.” 

He moved around the newel-post and came slowly down 
the stairs as if he were pulled against his will. But she 
did not give ground nor lower her flag. She said, “ Well, 
Ruddy,” with a little smile and gave him her hand, not at 
arm’s length but casually, as if they had parted no longer 
ago than yesterday. 

“ Well, Barbara,” and hardly moving his lips, he mur¬ 
mured, “ How splendid and happy you look ... up 
to the eyes.” 

It almost defeated her. Only the certainty that Miriam 
aware of that quick whisper was coming down behind him, 
kept her serene. Ruddy said aloud, “ Myrrh tells me you’ve 
been ill.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And married. I hadn’t known.” 

“ Hadn’t you?” 

He smiled at her, his slanting reckless smile twisted into 
something sardonic. “ I should have been the first to wish 
you joy. Last summer, Myrrh said.” 

“ The twenty-eighth of August.” 

A quiver crossed his face without at all disturbing his 
absurd smile and she felt that her own mouth mirrored it, 
the upper lip lifted and drawn back mirthlessly. “ You 
weren’t ill, then ? ” His glance at Miriam included her in 
his casual question. He was checking up on something 
Myrrh had said. 

“ They took me to the hospital,” Barbara said steadily, 
“ on the evening of the twenty-seventh. I was married the 
next afternoon.” 

Ruddy flashed her a look, the look she had learned to 
know long before, a look of understanding. Ruddy knew. 
By a sudden intuition flashed to his brain, by some look or 
tone of hers, he had leaped upon the truth. He stood 


244 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


quiet with a certainty that she would have given ten years 
of her life to have kept from him. As well as if she had 
told it aloud he understood that their unexpected meeting 
had been too much for her. 

Miriam broke in on that brief silence. She came down a 
step or two and put her arm through Barbara's, drawing 
her away. “ The wicker for the sun-room came this morn¬ 
ing. Come out and see it." So they went out into the sun- 
room and saw it. They each made an appropriate remark. 
Presently, after an interval, they were back on the stairway 
which commanded a view of both living-room and dining¬ 
room, and Miriam was saying, “ So, for a lark, I agreed. 

I bought this suit on my way to the train . . . Paul 

will fairly rave when he learns what it cost . . . and 

we came out to Blair on the train and rode over from 
there. Heavenly. I haven’t had such a ride in all the 
thousand years since I was a girl. Dirck has given me a 
corking idea for the house," she sent him a grateful glance. 

“ The place has worried me and Paul is no good at all, 
except for complaining about bills." 

“ I thought everything was going beautifully," Barbara 
said stiffly. 

“Did you? Oh . . ." she spoke with a soft impa¬ 

tience, “you must have seen how things are, you two. 
Why shouldn't we speak out? What are friends for if one 
can’t be frank—about life? Paul’s ways aren’t my ways. 
He hasn’t learned the art of living, as I have. In 
everything he’s . . . half-hearted. He talks eternally 

about living quietly and economically, within our means. 
Of course, we shall live quietly, of course we shall live 
economically. But there are certain things that we must * 
have before we can begin to live at all. There’s furniture, 
for one thing. And Paul has absurd things, in unspeakable 
taste. Things that are impossible. Only . . ." she gave 

a humorous shrug, “only Paul doesn’t see that they are 
impossible. The first Mrs. Goddard chose them and he 
likes them. He has a wild idea that we are going to use 
them, here. He counted on it when he allowed me only 


WOODLAWN 


245 


two thousand for furnishing. Imagine setting a limit when 
it comes to making one’s home.” 

“ Two thousand,” Barbara repeated reflectively. She was 
thinking what two thousand would do at the Little House. 

“ Isn’t it funny ? I could grow hysterical thinking about 
it. Aunt Meg donated the rugs for the living-room and 
the hall and Dad agreed . . . rather reluctantly, I will 
admit ... to do my dining-room, hangings and all. 
Gives me carte-blanche, which, by the way, Babs, I’d rather 
Paul didn’t know. I’ve sent for my own bedroom suite 
from home. They had me do over my room the year after 
I finished college with some vague idea, I suspect, of keep¬ 
ing me there. I told mother that if she’d let me do the 
house, all of it, it might have kept me, but she wouldn’t. 
She has a little economical yellow streak like Paul. Most 
people have it. Most people don’t care how they live. I’m 
different. I want atmosphere, the little things that 
create one’s background . . . sophisticated bits of 

beauty.” 

“ Little things ? ” 

“ The picture that delights one, Ruddy, this Chinese rug 
for a particular corner, that bit of cloisonne, * white hya¬ 
cinths to feed my soul.’ I’m the sort that cares about 
beauty. . . . Almost no women do, really. There is 

one perfect etching I’ve dreamed of hanging over the desk, 
there, between the windows.” 

“ I see. Would the good Paul be aware of dreams come 
true if he should find it hanging there, between the win¬ 
dows? Or would you feel that you must present him with 
detailed explanations ? ” 

Miriam laughed and put her hand over his on the newel- 
post. “ Dirck, you darling. How corking.” 

“ I’d like it myself.” 

“ We’ll make a lark of shopping for it together. What 
day? Friday?” 

“ Friday suits me.” 

“ As soon after lunch as possible.” 

“Why not have lunch with me?” His look traveled 


2 46 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

past Miriam and the hand that rested on his and reached 
Barbara. A significant look. (“ He’s trying to show me 
how far the indirect method takes one,” she thought. “ And 
right here I’m making a rule never to wheedle things from 
a man. Commandeering, it is. I’ll go without. . . .”) 

A look that made her lift her chin. 

“ But that’s coming to be a rather regular arrangement, 
isn’t it?” Miriam said smiling secretly. “ Let’s get out of 
here, Ruddy. We’ve all the measurements we need, and 
I’m wild for a canter. There’ll be other days, Babs, darling, 
when we’ll see you and very soon if we are to savor May 
to the utmost. We’ll do this all again. So you don’t mind 
our running away ? ” 

Barbara denied minding. She walked with Miriam down 
the path and stood by the side of the road while Ruddy 
untied the horses. 

“ Ruddy is the kind of friend that every woman ought to 
have,” Miriam said softly. “ I do think I’m lucky to have 
him in a world as desperate as this. He’s going to be down 
here a lot. He wants to. I’m to keep open house for his 
friends and all that . . . make a sort of home for 
him.” 

“ Hasn’t he a home of his own? ” Barbara heard herself 
asking coolly. Her thoughts went back to Gannet’s exultant 
face the night Ruddy came home from overseas. Miriam 
smiled tolerantly. 

“ Nouveau . . she said. “ An impossible back¬ 

ground for Dirck. Have you ever seen his mother? Wood- 
lawn is secondary ... a refuge when things at home 
are stupid and thick. Some evening when he’s here, I’ll 
bring him over.” 

“To the Little House?” Barbara asked involuntarily. 
Instantly, she imagined him there, saw the Little House, 
shabby and quaint, filled with its queer constrained tender¬ 
ness. Ruddy facing Geoff in the Little House. Ruddy 
would know the truth, would grasp with a quick glance the 
impalpable barrier building between Geoffrey and herself. 
Ruddy must not come there. . . . 


WOODLAWN 247 

“ Poor old Babs. You are ashamed of that sordid little 
hut, aren’t you ? Grotesque, your being there.” 

They made their farewells and Ruddy helped Miriam to 
mount her horse. He lifted his hat and the clouded light 
fell upon him, touching his hair. It looked like fine-spun 
gold. The Laughing Cavalier. . . . 

Barbara stood quietly trying to think. It was natural 
enough that Ruddy should come to Woodlawn. He and 
Miriam had been friends for years. He had sold the God¬ 
dards the house. He would have an interest in it. But 
it was odd seeing them ride away together. Ruddy was 
bending over and Myrrh’s face was turned toward his. 
Odd, too, that Miriam should be so oblivious. That en¬ 
gagement broken between Barbara and Ruddy had been the 
incident of the year while Miriam was experimenting in 
living at home. Had she never guessed ? Hadn’t she known 
something of it in the mad months of their housekeeping 
in Tower-town? Or was she simply ignoring everything as 
she had ignored the boy-and-girl affair in Franklin? It was 
best, doubtless, to ignore things. Miriam, who chose al¬ 
ways to detach herself from anything that might prove em¬ 
barrassing, would certainly think that was easier in all ways; 
and that was true. The past was past. It had belonged to 
Barbara Fallows; and there was no Barbara Fallows, now. 
There was only Barbara Hale. 

Barbara Hale would have to take care. Years from now 
when she had worked out some easy way of living, she 
could risk such a situation as Miriam had rashly suggested; 
but not now. Not when Ruddy’s quick eyes could read 
her. . . . Marriage didn’t really settle everything after 

all. 

She could still see the small figures cantering along the 
road, tiny as marionettes. She strained her eyes trying to 
keep them in sight. After a long time, she discovered that 
she was standing rather idiotically staring down the stretch 
of empty white road. 


248 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


IV 

The business of acquiring Woodlawn went without a 
hitch. The Goddards obtained possession in April and were 
settled by the last of May. By June, Miriam was the most 
conspicuous person in the township. 

It was, Barbara conjectured, a carefully contrived con¬ 
spicuousness as if Miriam, calculating the chances that 
might accumulate against an invader of an old, settled com¬ 
munity, knew that she ran the risk of being ignored; and 
chosen the defensive position herself. She used what few 
acquaintances she made at first, to diffuse the impression 
that she wanted no more, that she preferred seclusion and 
the simplicity of living indicated by her small impressive 
house with its well-tended lawns and orderly trees. She 
said, frankly, that calls were a bore; she assumed an air of 
secret amusement toward the social pretentiousness of a 
small town . . . the Luncheon Club whose members 

frankly disclaimed knowledge of Japanese poetry and turned 
their attention to bridge, the Dancing Club which met fort¬ 
nightly during the winter in the K. P. hall, the dinners at 
which for half a century Wynville had entertained itself, 
forty to sixty neighbors sitting down by fours at tiny tables, 
spread through the high, wide rooms of some old-fashioned 
house, gossiping gently over their leisurely and delicious 
meal, playing euchre; she had a superior smile for the 
serviceable tweeds of elderly couples. Even Barbara saw 
that she was different, superior to provincial simplicities, a 
recluse absorbed in her books and her garden, asking noth¬ 
ing save to be left alone. 

Except that there was a certain subtle advertising. 
Miriam's furniture advertised her. Before it stood clear of 
its wrappings it was subject to comment in half the houses 
of the neighborhood and Miriam’s insistent discrimination 
. . . her fashion of trying a chair or table in the par¬ 

ticular place designed for it, finding it a shade imperfect 
there, the light wrong on the grain of the wood or the 
effect too obvious, not sufficiently subordinate to the en- 


WOODLAWN 249 

semble, and ordering it repacked and returned . . . was 

most impressive. Even more her servants advertised her. 
They included a cook, a man-of-all-work, frequently drunk, 
and a nursemaid for Nancy; and their engaging involved 
elaborate references from former employers, a thing quite 
unknown in Wynville where personal histories were such 
open books that he who ran might read, and a trial to the 
applicants themselves, especially the nursemaid, an anaemic 
fifteen-year-old, offspring of the minister of the Swedish 
Mission church down the county road and the eldest of 
nine, from whom Miriam . . . who thought only of 
Nancy . . . demanded sheer joie de vivre. 

Still, the prolonged telephones required for these discus¬ 
sions, over party lines, became the basis for a wide acquaint¬ 
ance. Careful nods began to be exchanged at the station, 
the post-office, at the market. Miriam had charm and fas¬ 
cination. She was so self-sufficient, so superbly poised, so 
carelessly, warmly cordial. In no time she knew three times 
as many people in the county as Barbara, with all the Hales 
behind her. 

“ And I’ve been here six weeks,” she said triumphantly. 
“ Oh, this is the background for me now, Babs. I shall 
outgrow it in time. Eventually, we’ll have a smart apart¬ 
ment in town for the winter and just the right circle, but 
for a while this is better. I stand out here. You ought to 
see the curtains pulled a little, and the discreet averted eyes 
along the streets when I ride through the burg with Dirck. 
It’s exactly like a scene in a play.” 

Miriam was right. It was exactly like a scene in a play, 
one into which she infused a curiously dramatic quality. 
She rode with a look of rapture, lifting her face to the 
wind, galloping, with Ruddy beside her, through the shady 
streets of the town and out along the hard country roads. 
The effect was hardly short of overwhelming. 

The sensations that swept Barbara when she saw Ruddy 
and Myrrh together had a tinge of the familiar sickening 
pain. Miriam arranging the flowers that Ruddy sent her, 
meeting him at the station, riding with him, entertaining 


250 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

him among the guests at her week-end parties; and Barbara 
occasionally there, an odd wheel, the third between Ruddy 
and another woman. She smiled at the irony of it. 

Geoffrey rarely made a fourth. Harmony was never 
quite to be attained when he and Miriam were in the same 
room. He disliked her; and he thought Paul insignificant, 
too armored in self-constraint. Ruddy he enjoyed frankly 
as most men did. He was quite unaware that Barbara and 
Ruddy could have memories in common, accepting their 
youthful friendship on the plane of fifty of his own. And 
Barbara did not tell him. She had no relish for outlining 
the history of events already canceled, before Geoffrey. 
What was there to say worth the saying? The past was 
dead. Geoffrey’s own unconsciousness proved how unaf¬ 
fected was this new friendliness rising from its ashes. 

“ What gets me,” he said, “ is what a man like Gannet 
sees in her.” 

“ Charm . . . cleverness,” Barbara stiffened to 

Miriam’s defense, “ cultivation, discriminating tastes, en¬ 
thusiasms.” 

“ They wouldn’t get her anywhere with me,” said Geoffrey. 
“ I don’t believe they do with him. Something . . .” 

Barbara’s lip curled a little. Why argue? What did it 
matter what Geoffrey thought ? What did anything matter ? 

So it came to be Mark instead of Geoffrey who slipped 
away in semi-clandestine fashion for the late Sunday walks 
that ended, usually, at Woodlawn. Why they so seldom 
mentioned their destination, neither of them could have told. 
A faint disapproval on Dorothea’s part, perhaps, prevented 
it. They stole out secretly like conspirators, looking for¬ 
ward to tea and a rubber of bridge. The atmosphere was 
pleasant where Mark was. Paul, rather silent, ill at ease, 
or rather painfully jocose under Miriam’s amused arrows 
of criticism, thawed out with Mark. They talked in low 
tones, apart from the rest, bending over some of Paul’s 
marvelous books. His library never failed to astonish 
Barbara. Those books of his seemed such an unusual pos¬ 
session for their simple owner. 


WOODLAWN 


251 


“ But he is unusual himself,” Mark said, “and not wholly 
simple. What I mean is that he doesn’t believe in his heart 
that life is simple but he could accept it if he were left 
alone. A thoroughly nice fellow.” 

It was Miriam and Barbara, however, rather than un¬ 
toward circumstance that drew that line of demarcation 
between Woodlawn and Maple Hill. 

“ I don’t care greatly for your Hales, Babs-honey,” 
Miriam said. “ Typically of the Vanishing Race, wouldn’t 
you say? Smug . . . hypocritical . . . denying 
happiness as an end in life and wanting people to agonize 
over whatever is instinctive or joyous. They’d be harsh 
judges of pagan souls like ours. Puritans.” 

Speaking of pagan souls, Myrrh had heard music the 
Saturday night before . . . Kreisler. She had hap¬ 

pened into . . . well, a friend . . . (“ She means 
Ruddy,” Barbara decided) in town and they had managed 
tickets at the last moment, because she wanted it, ’phoning 
for them from the club where they dined. Enormous 
prices, they paid; but it was worth it. Fun to pay high for 
the glorious hours of living. . . . “ The music sprayed 

up to the very vault of the roof and fell down on you like 
a golden fountain. It is something to feel yourself part of 
the world . . .” (“ She never has cared for music, 
really,” thought Barbara. “ How can she talk like that ? ” 
But Miriam made her point clear.) “Of that world 
. . . the diamonds, the gowns, those wonderful soft- 

fleshed women. You poor Babs.” 

“ Poor?” 

“ Don’t pretend. You’ve no reason for being on guard 
against me ... or against yourself here. Can’t I see 
how quiet you’ve grown away from it all? Missing every¬ 
thing that’s fine, wizening into something lean and hard in 
the treadmill they’ve set you? You’ve the faint air about 
you all the time of pinioned wings, dear-heart. Babs, don’t 
you caref ” 

Barbara breathed quickly. Did she care ? At the moment 
life seemed too reduced and it did not matter a farthing 


252 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

that Miriam or Geoff or Dorothea Hale existed. Why 
bother? Why search for coherence or satisfaction in life? 
Why shouldn't one take human relationships mockingly? 
Weren't they, after all, a series of accidents? 


XVI 


THE HALES 

I 

From her stone doorstep Barbara looked after Geoffrey 
in the early mornings. Beyond the fields the river made a 
silvery-blue line, reflecting the trees and the sky, and be¬ 
yond the river rose the low green hills. At seven the mail- 
plane for Omaha passed flying above the hills and the river, 
the far-off sound of its motor like the buzzing of a mon¬ 
strous insect. Geoffrey always stopped and looked up when 
the plane went by, waiting till it was out of sight. After¬ 
ward, he turned back to his work, his eyes on the furrow 
as he went up, over the brow of the slope. 

That concentrated interest in the tilling of the earth 
touched Barbara to a slightly disdainful amusement. All 
the madness of summer in the air . . . brown hollows 

stirring to the white of flowers, juncoes twittering, strips 
of woodland in song, orioles, meadow-larks, robins singing 
in the early dawns . . . and Geoffrey frowning at his 

furrows. For herself, she liked well enough to poke seeds 
into the strip that Geoffrey dug for her along the fence, liked 
the damp freshness as she had liked that childhood garden 
at St. Agatha's and the pleasant weariness that fell on her 
after hours in the open air. . . . But she hated the 

grime and dirt. She looked at Geoffrey and his father in 
the fields, their faces streaked with dust and perspiration 
and felt only a sense of disgust. It seemed unworthy for 
the men they were to spend their lives grubbing in the 
ground, to give oneself and one's labor to mere corn and 
wheat, to cattle and hogs, to descend to the uncouth sim¬ 
plicities such as were natural to the swarthy peasants that 
had begun to swarm through the valley. 


254 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ Tenantry’s a bad trend,” Cyrus Hale said to her once 
when he joined her on her doorstep, “ but it’s here. All up 
and down the river the land’s going. Parceled out into 
small holdings, it means homes for these Austrians and 
Poles and one oughtn’t to begrudge men homes. It was the 
idea of a home that brought people out here in the first place, 
the same as it’s bringing in these young immigrants . . . 

a free home. My grandfather homesteaded his section a 
hundred years back when it was literally virgin soil. 
There’s a legend in the family that someone asked him to 
stay around Chicago when he came through and offered 
him plenty of good land down along the lake-front. They 
argued that it was worth taking because the chance was 
that some day a railroad would come into the town; but 
a shrewd young buck like Amos Hale couldn’t see himself 
farming in a bog by a fresh water sea, when there were 
sections out here within forty miles and a mill that could 
grind corn near enough so you could make the trip in a 
couple of days, even with the bad roads . . . not 

more’n twenty miles outside. He planted the old orchard 
south of the knoll. This stone we’re sitting on, all these 
stones in the Little House, he brought himself from the old 
quarry down the river. You don’t have stone like this 
quarried any more around here. I’ve the old-fashioned 
heavy chisel that shaped them yet. He built the mantel¬ 
piece and the cupboards and made fine work of it, Barbara, 
nice work. Ever noticed it? ” 

“ No. I hadn’t.” 

“ It was his home, you see,” Cyrus said simply, “ and a 
free home in a valley that had never been conquered. I 
like to think that my acres haven’t been overrun with 
armies, ever, nor divided in the spoils of war. Almost the 
only part of the world you can say that about. It makes a 
home worth privation and danger to have it free. And it 
gives you a feel for your earth to remember one man and 
one woman starting out with a gun and an axe and a couple 
of dogs, homesteading wild land. There was nothing they 
couldn’t turn their hands to, nothing that either of them 


255 


THE HALES 

dicing have to do. They worked beside each other when 
they were well and nursed each other when they were sick, 
got their living out of their own ground, brought up their 
children, grew together, one flesh, one spirit. That’s mar¬ 
riage, Barbara, isn’t it? ” 

“ A hard sort of marriage.” 

“No marriage is easy ... but there was zest in 
facing an empty continent and turning it into a country. 
The moment things got easy, your pioneers pushed on 
. . . free to work out their own destinies . . . the 

freest men the world has ever known. Whole families here¬ 
about picked up and went to Iowa when the boom was on 
and in the forties whole little towns went overland to Ore¬ 
gon . . . frontiersmen . . .” 

“ But the Hales stayed.” 

“ Not all of them. My father stayed in his generation 
and I did. The farm has land that one man can manage 
with average help. We can buy more every now and then 
because we’re saving work with some new machinery and 
labor goes further. I wish my father could have farmed 
with the machinery I’m using. He was a natural born 
mechanic. He would have liked just tinkering with it. 
And I wish my grandfather could once have had a vision 
of what his land is doing this year, say. He made it pay. 
He farmed it with his own hands and made it pay enough 
to give him a comfortable living and educate his children; 
and my father made it pay and bought considerable more 
and educated his children better and gave them 
travel . . .” 

“To Bangor, Maine?” Barbara asked. 

“ No. I went down to Bangor to marry Dorothea but I 
met her up at Pinelands the same as you did Geoff. Her 
uncle was the Founder and she came out here to go to 
school. For a while I’d my doubts if she’d stay. She didn’t 
like it here in the valley. She liked the east.” 

For the first time, Barbara felt kinship with Dorothea. 
“But you liked it. You didn’t want to go away from 
Maple Hill? ” 


256 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ My life’s here,” he said simply. He leaned his head 
against the stone doorway and looked away over the green 
fields and the blue water of the river; and presently he 
began to speak slowly. He was far along before Barbara 
suspected him of quoting. “ ‘ I have tilled its soil, I have 
gathered its harvests, I have waited upon its seasons, and 
always I have reaped what I have sown. While I delved 
I did not lose sight of the sky overhead. While I gathered 
its bread and meat for my body, I did not neglect to gather 
its bread and meat for my soul. I have climbed its moun¬ 
tains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, 
felt the sting of its frosts, the oppressions of its heats, the 
drench of its rains, the fury of its winds and always have 
beauty and joy waited on my going and my coming.’ That’s 
how John Burroughs felt about the earth. Ever read John 
Burroughs, Barbara? He was a scientist and naturalist, of 
course, but he was a farmer first and he’d rather have been 
a farmer than any. I’ve liked feeling this place work un¬ 
der my hands. But I know well enough that the day’s com¬ 
ing when it’ll be weighed in the balance. Mark’s no farmer. 
It’ll either be Geoff here or a Wop.” 

His shrewd eyes rested on Barbara significantly and he 
waited for her to speak; but she did not take up the glove. 
She murmured indefinitely about the romance of a hundred 
years taken as a whole and the reality of hard work day by 
day; and he twisted himself to his feet like a lank boy, 
looking down at his limp, earth-stained trousers. 

“ Lord, yes, it’s hard work,” he said. “ Grinding, un¬ 
ending work.” 

Grinding, unending work. The phrase came back to her 
every day. The intensive quiet that had filled the house 
in the winter vanished with spring as if it had never been. 
New faces appeared in the barns and fields, a long table 
was set up in the screened summer-house for the farm 
hands, and old Christine had a younger woman to help her. 
Already, extra women had been engaged for the threshing 
and canning seasons . . . hard-armed Scandinavians 

from Wynville who had been coming to Maple Hill for 


257 


THE HALES 

twenty years and a dark-eyed Hungarian, new to the valley 
and an alien among the others. The cry for help went 
through the valley like a wailing. 

Unending work. Dorothea’s small wiry figure moved 
swiftly through the house to the dairy, to her salad garden, 
to that great enclosure where her White Rocks pecked and 
broilers fattened for the autumn markets. Her day fol¬ 
lowed an unaltering routine. She breakfasted, she gave 
orders to the helpers, she worked in her garden, she worked 
in the house. In the afternoon, she napped briefly, she 
marketed or did errands for Cyrus in the village, she had 
tea in the small sun-room and sewed afterward. She asked 
Barbara every day to join her, but she sat often, silent, her 
tiny figure erect in its high-backed chair, her feet drawn up 
primly on a footstool, her dark eyes peering absently over 
her egg-shell cup. Had she anything to remember, Barbara 
wondered, through all those years at Maple Hill beyond that 
ceaseless hurry through tasks that appeared in order and 
were accomplished? Day after day through a long life¬ 
time she had put behind her a day’s labor . . . coarse, 

hard labor. 

Anne came for two weeks in June and thereafter, having 
bought a Ford, drove herself out from the city whatever 
Sundays she could spare. She liked Wynville, and at once 
fell into the swift routine of work at the farm, seeing things 
to do which had never occurred to Barbara. But, as 
Miriam pointed out, Anne was of the same piece of cloth 
as the Hales themselves . . . Puritanic in heritage, 

with an austere acceptance of harsh labors eternally re¬ 
current. It was one way of life . . . but it was none 

of Barbara’s. Her way was Miriam’s, glad, tingling living, 
seeking life, seeking that elusive thing, reality. 

It was sometime in this first summer that the thought 
came to Barbara of leaving Geoffrey. . . . 

II 

When Anne had left Barbara spent more time with 
Miriam. She was at Woodlawn, often, for a whole idle 


258 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

day going over for luncheon, perhaps, and spending the 
afternoon and evening. When Paul was away, she spent 
the night and their intimacy had the closeness of the old 
tower-room. There was no one else who came so close as 
Myrrh . . . not Anne, not Geoff, not Mark, not even 

Ruddy. It had always been hard to talk of impersonal 
things to Ruddy. Thoughts died still-born. Only their 
kisses had been rapture. But Miriam . . . 

Miriam was apt to grow charmingly excited at her own 
brilliance. Her cheeks flushed when she talked and her 
narrow smoke-gray eyes sparkled. Her comments might be 
sharp but they were stimulating. New music lay on her 
piano for Barbara's playing, new books crowded her tables; 
and Barbara reveled in them and in talk about them. They 
had long, rambling discussions, talking deliciously, books 
and plays, music, concerts, fashions, politics, house-furnish¬ 
ings, ethics, individualism and freedom. It was deeper talk 
than they had ever had before and with an edge on it. 
Often when they arrived, as women always do, at the per¬ 
sonal application, Barbara felt embarrassment. She would 
have liked to abandon herself unreservedly to Miriam, but 
the old habit of reticence was too strong. 

Miriam had no reticences. No disclosures of all her 
years with Anne, not even marriage, had prepared Barbara 
for this unabashed recital of experiences and emotions, this 
rending of the last veils, this presentment of the spiritual 
self naked and unashamed. Miriam often quoted, “ The 
silence of night, a dying fire, the best of words unsaid 
. . . friendship.” But she left practically nothing un¬ 

said. 

“ Another row to-day, Babs.” 

“ Oh, Miriam.” A cry of regret for unnecessary 
hurt. 

“ I've heard it said that ninety days will prove the success 
or failure of any marriage; and it’s true.” 

“ It can’t always be true.” Ninety days. 

“ It’s true of mine. Paul’s no type to satisfy me. He’s 
small. His nagging’s like the burr of a dentist’s drill and 


THE HALES 


259 


it never stops. He says that in four months I’ve spent the 
savings of ten years. It seems he began saving when he 
was twenty-one. Imagine! ” 

“ But the house did cost more than you expected/* 

“ Dirck says it’s a corking investment, though . . . 

and just the place you’d think a big, successful man 
would want for his background. And Paul keeps crying 
out that it’s too heavy a burden and that we shall lose it in 
spite of all he can do. That sort of whining shrivels your 
faith in a man, doesn’t it, Babs? For a woman of my 
sort to feel the contemptuous fear that perhaps the man 
she’s married can’t give her the things she wants . . . 

it’s tragedy. I never can quite see why you are so patient 
with this Geoffrey of yours, who is nobody at all but his 
father’s hired man. . . /* 

“ But your house is expensive/* Barbara cut in neatly. 
She had no intention of discussing Geoffrey with Miriam. 
Nor her own patience. Time enough when she had come to 
conclusions. “ And Paul’s clients never see his house.” 

“ I’ve planned a series of house-parties for fall . . . 

the sort of people Paul ought to meet. I’ve already engaged 
Mattens for the catering.” 

“What does Paul say?” 

“You can imagine, can’t you? He says that at least 
until the furniture is paid for . . . as if I’d committed 

a crime in running over his miserly budget. But what was 
the use in putting money into things we’d discard in a year 
or two? He ought to take my judgment on things of that 
sort. If I’m his wife, I’m his equal. His equal . . .” 

she laughed a little. “ He has the most beggarly ideas of 
saving. He thinks we shouldn’t feed and pay a man through 
the winter and he’s discovered that Enar drinks like a fish 
and wants him to go. I told him Signe would certainly go 
with him. . . . You know, Babs, I’m perfectly certain 

Enar is in the house most nights . . . and Paul says to 

let Signe go, too. He*s as unreasonable as a two-year-old. 
Here I am, raising her wages every month to keep her and 
Paul wants me to ask her to get up at six and make break- 


260 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

fast for him, because, if the heavens fall, he thinks he must 
make the seven-forty. And he will walk to the station. 
He says he can’t afford the town-taxi every day. I tell him 
that he could buy his breakfast when he gets into town. . . . 
When you’re up as early as that, you’ve never any real 
hunger for food. I haven’t, even when Signe brings up my 
tray at eight. . . .” 

“ Then you don’t get up when he does, Myrrh? ” 

“ At six ? Why should I ? I never have.” 

Which was true. Barbara could remember that Miriam 
had called her unreasonable when she refused to bring up 
her breakfast-tray, daily, to the tower-room. It wasn’t very 
much to bring up a tray. 

The smooth, creamy voice seemed suddenly to come from 
a great distance. She was still talking about Paul, Paul’s 
concern for Nancy, Paul’s worrying. Barbara felt an un¬ 
wonted and inexplicable weariness. Silly, it was, that 

glorious August day to be sitting in the Little House, talk¬ 
ing of unhappy things . . . Paul’s quarreling and 

miserliness. Through her brain detached and wholly mean¬ 
ingless words began to march, clicking into compounds at 
the threshold of her thought. Compounds. . . . Will 

. . . self-will. Seeking . . . self-seeking. Con¬ 
cerned . . . self-concerned. Complacent . . . self- 

complacent. Beauty . . . no, that would not do. 

“ You aren’t really listening, Babs.” 

“ I seem frightfully tired all of a sudden. I don’t know 
why.” 

“ Inferiority complex,” Miriam said. “ You like being 
ill. You’re a bit self-indulgent.” 

Self-indulgent. Self-appreciative. Self-defeated. Self- 
dependent. Self-justification. Self-pity. Self-mastery. 

Self. Self ... a curious word. What was self? 

What sort of being did Barbara Hale mean when she spoke 
of self? A different sort from that Miriam meant? 

“ When he’s half-mad with jealousy, he stirs me,” Miriam 
was saying. “ He holds himself in control a long time 
^ . . longer than you’d think anyone could. But I’ve 


THE HALES 


261 


found ways. We’ve been through big scenes, racking, tre¬ 
mendous scenes. I’m primitive enough to know how big 
they are. I think it may be Dirck, though Paul hasn’t come 
to names.” 

Even less than Geoffrey did Barbara wish to talk about 
Ruddy. Her chin lifted and Miriam sent her a narrowed 
look. “ I could tell you things about Dirck Gannet, too. 
He’s come a long way from the bread-and-butter boy who 
had a fancy for you. He’s different. . . .” 

The door slammed behind them and Barbara screamed, 
a silly nervous scream. Miriam stared at her white face. 
“You frightened her,” she said to Geoffrey, “banging the 
door like that.” 

But she would not have screamed, Barbara told herself, 
if she had not been tired. She was as spent as if she her¬ 
self had been through the racking scenes which Miriam 
suggested. She hated pain and the thought of pain, of hurt, 
of jealousy. The words alone seemed to take something 
from her slender store of strength. A tedious monotony 
of words held in her mind. Self . . . self-praise, self- 

analysis, self-abasement. . . . Not that they mattered 
in the least. 

She looked at Geoffrey wiping his hands on a kitchen 
towel. His whole figure had a rock-like steadiness and his 
hands looked firm and hard and cool. She remembered how 
cool they had felt on her forehead when she was ill. 
“ Geoffrey,” she called, “ would you put your hand on my 
forehead for a little? I’m done, for some reason. I wish 
you’d put your hand on my forehead and keep it there.” 

A long time after, she opened her eyes. His head was 
etched against the glow of the lamp with the light like a 
line of pure gilt around it. He was sitting very still, read¬ 
ing, and his hand was on her forehead. 

Ill 

In the end it seemed that all of Geoffrey’s hard work 
amounted to little. He had, to be sure, a salary as overseer 
at Maple Hill, but the profits he made from the belladonna 


262 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

were scanty and he put them all, together with his share 
of excess profits, into a glass laboratory for experimentation 
with young plants. He banked a rather slender store, prom¬ 
ising Barbara that it should see them through the winter. 
“ It means close going, Barbara. We've nothing, this year, 
for fripperies.” 

Barbara smiled secretly. She had learned something that 
summer of the incessant gamble of the farming trade 
against odds of wind and weather, storm and hail and 
drought. There was in her heart for Geoffrey something 
of Miriam's contempt for the plodder, content with grub¬ 
bing. She seemed suddenly to have gone a long way be¬ 
yond Geoffrey Hale. 

October came. Towering above the Little House, a 
lovely tree, still holding an inner green against the approach 
of frost, had yet a band of bright yellow about the edge 
of every leaf; the ivy climbing over the gray stone hung in 
long slender tendrils, each beginning to turn a dusky scarlet ; 
the meadows in the morning were like silver-shot tissue 
under the mist rolling up from the river. 

By October Wynville was in social ferment. It was a 
friendly, prosperous old town, too small for the usual coun¬ 
try-club life of city suburbs, too far from the city to depend 
on its organized and impersonal amusements. The younger 
generation, relieved from the tenseness of war-years, were 
drawing together, making their own pleasures. Through 
the summer they picnicked, cooking supper in some woodsy 
hollow or called on each other Sunday afternoons raiding 
their pantries for impromptu communal meals; but now, 
they were giving small formal dinners, all evening dress 
and caviare, with bridge to follow, in their new bungalows 
and Dutch Colonial houses. The Luncheon Club drew 
dates, first and third Wednesdays, the Fortnightly arranged 
for club dinners, the Dancing Club engaged the K. P. Hall 
for alternate Friday evenings. 

Barbara refurbished her evening frocks and entertained 
in her turn. These were Geoff's friends. She never saw 
them as hers, never admitted them to intimacy. She 


263 


THE HALES 

knew their names and struggled to remember their rather 
intricate relationships but that was all. She felt herself 
slightly stiff among them. They were, most of them, so 
frankly in love, looking ahead with hopes as shining as 
their bridal silver; and Barbara had learned to be afraid 
of love and never to look ahead at all lest she should come 
up against a blank wall in the maze through which she 
groped. She was gracious and listened, talked a little and 
was talked to. Nobody suspected that she was unhappy 
unless it were Anne Linton, too busy, as usual, to see 
Barbara often or for very long, but briefly concerned, when 
she did, over the air of detachment which Barbara wore 
like a cloak, covering everything. Anne Linton and 
Geoff . . . 

Geoffrey did not pretend to understand. He said so 
openly. He had thought that the apathy left from illness 
would drop away but that illness was more than a year past 
and the air of complete indifference remained. They per¬ 
sistently ignored the thing that held them, ever so slightly, 
apart. It was the thinnest of barriers, hardly more than a 
constraint unwilling and unintended. Besides Geoffrey had 
tried other methods and got nowhere. 

“ My dear, what is it ? ” he said once when they were 
alone. “ What is the matter ? ” 

Barbara shook her head in denial that anything was the 
matter, smiling at him. 

“ But there is,” he persisted. “ I’ve the feeling some¬ 
times that you’re stone from the crown of your head to 
your feet. I want you to be happy. . . . There’s some¬ 

thing the matter with me if you can’t be happy here.” And 
when she began to talk animatedly, he thought, “ I wonder 
if she cares a tinker’s dam about me, after all.” He felt a 
surging desire to make her “ care,” to bring the stone to 
life even if it crushed him. 

Barbara gave the barrier a name. It was that thought 
lying hidden in the secret places of her mind that this life 
with Geoffrey could not go on forever. Only ... if 
one dreaded pain, one could not strike causelessly at a man 


264 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

who loved one. And Geoffrey loved her. Better, she knew, 
than she deserved. 

“. . . grew together, one flesh, one spirit,” Cyrus Hale 

had said; but Barbara smiled because he mentioned the 
spirit. “ They shall be one flesh,” had its old wisdom, was 
the exact meaning of marriage. One could give flesh since 
it was unimportant, but not the spirit, never the spirit, never 
the whole. The lesser gift was all that men wanted. Even 
Geoffrey. 

Their public life was more successful than the life they 
lived in private. They had an unsentimental comradeliness, 
a lucid comprehension of each other’s minds, a mutual 
quick mockery. Whatever bewilderment Geoffrey carried 
in his heart, he played the role of offhand husband well, 
with an habitual courtesy. At Maple Hill, they drew closer 
than anywhere, cautious of their moods under the shrewd 
eyes of the elder Hales, playing up. 

They were at Maple Hill Saturday nights. Mark came 
home from Franklin always, for the week-end, going back 
on an evening train after the simplicity of Sunday, but there 
was something formal about those gala nights when the 
Hales met. It was preeminently Dorothea’s occasion, for 
which she waited through the week and to which her un¬ 
spoken will held the others. The most delicate and favored 
dishes were made ready. There were the heaviest linens 
and the silver, fine delicate spoons a century old and a 
Sheffield service. Madam Hale behind her grandmother’s 
coffee-pot wore black silk with a bit of Mechlin at the 
throat and wrists . . . narrow Mechlin but real. 

Barbara vaguely dreaded those dinners. She liked better 
the long walks with Mark and the hour or two Saturday 
afternoon when they worked in his study. He was going 
over a series of lectures for the winter and Barbara could 
help him. 

“ You’re nice to me, Mark,” she said when their work 
slackened late in the day. She wanted to pave the way to 
speaking again of the money she owed him and to explain 
that she meant to repay him. 


265 


THE HALES 

“ And why shouldn’t I be nice to you ? ” 

“ We’ve been friends a long time, haven’t we? I wasn’t 
seventeen, quite, that day at Pinelands and now I’m twenty- 
four, not a girl but a woman. I wish I could get some 
happiness out of being a woman.” 

“ Not happy, Barbara? I’m . . . sorry.” 

His queer, dry tone startled her and she sat still, her 
arms folded, her eyes on his face. It was not so much what 
she had said as where, involuntarily, she had put the ac¬ 
cent. “ Some happiness out of being a woman.” The em¬ 
phasis dragged the sentence behind it. “ I meant,” she ex¬ 
plained frowningly, “ that I didn’t find such happiness in 
being a girl . . . not a lot of it, Mark . . . not 
what I’d expected. Things happened too soon, always, be¬ 
fore I was ready, and they were too sharp. When I think 
back, it seemed to me that however sweet the cup seemed 
when I took it up, the lees were bitter.” 

“ I know.” 

“You mean that it's a commonplace? One of those ex¬ 
periences that seem so strange to you and yet that every¬ 
body has? Well, I don’t know. I’d have said it might be 
true of men. . . . But somehow I’ve always felt that 

women would know happiness more deeply than men ever 
could ... in vivid, delicate adventures of the spirit. 
As if Nature had given them the power to feel joy poign¬ 
antly in just recompense for all the things that have been 
denied them. I’ve always been glad I was born a woman. 
Happiness has been real to me, almost the realest thing in 
life. Long ago, when I was a little girl, Anne talked to 
me about fires of happiness. Anne could say lovely things. 
Under all her brusquerie Anne thinks lovely thoughts. 
I could picture those fires blazing and I believed I’d 
find them, come on them suddenly around a turn in the 
road.” 

“That was almost the first thing I ever heard you say 
. . . that day at Pinelands.” 

“ Was it ? Well ... I took the wrong turnings. I 
went hurrying along, wasting, never looking ahead. Even 


266 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

. . . Mark, even marrying Geoff was like that. It was 

my doing.” 

“ Oh, come, Barbara. Geoff’s not a chap to be coerced.” 

“ Not coerced. I appealed to his chivalry. I was ill and 
harried and I turned to him.” 

“To . . . Geoffrey?” 

“ Does it surprise you so? ” She looked hard at his face, 
his thin compressed lips, his dark eyes that glowed. 
" Mark, didn’t you ever feel that you wanted to cut away 
from life as you’d known it always before? Do one thing 
that would cut you loose and escape ? ” 

“ I think,” Mark said slowly, “ that’s one question I 
sha’n’t try to answer.” 

“ Well, it doesn’t matter. If you’d ever have the feeling 
you’d understand what I’m trying to say. It was what I 
did when I married Geoff. Escape. In some ways, things 
had grown intolerable and I wanted them changed. The 
hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was to wait and do noth¬ 
ing. But I’d no business marrying Geoff like that. I made 
a mess of everything. I ought to have fought it through 
alone. It wasn’t fair to let him carry me. It wasn’t 
. . . sporting. I’ve been a load.” 

“ You don’t know him,” Mark said quietly. 

“ I have exactly that feeling,” she answered flippantly. 
“ No one in these days pretends to know the man one 
marries. You move in parallels never meeting even in 
infinity.” 

There was a pause. Barbara leaned on the desk, her 
fingers shuffling through the cards she had taken from the 
file . . . Belladonna, cultivation of; harvesting of; 

marketing; belladonna, spraying. . . . “I shall never 

know him quite as I know you, Mark dear. I’m sure of 
that, however well I know him. I know you so well. And 
I love being with you. I’m never quite so at peace any¬ 
where as I am with you.” 

A slight sound brought her around to the door. 
Dorothea was standing there with a strained look on her 
face, a narrow watchfulness that Barbara resented. 


THE HALES 267 

"Geoffrey has come in,” she said. "Dinner is ready. 
It is almost seven.” 

IV 

Glancing over her shoulder at intervals while she sat at 
the piano, she saw that Dorothea was still watching. She 
sat in her high-backed chair before the fireplace, her dark 
gaze ruthlessly raking their faces. Mark’s and Geoff’s and 
Barbara’s. That gleam of critical observation stirred 
Barbara to hot resentment and whenever she looked at the 
small figure with its ivory face, she felt herself standing 
in defensive warfare with Geoffrey’s mother. Dorothea had 
never given her approval or whole-hearted praise. Why? 
Because she felt that Barbara had no reverence for the 
traditions, hoary with age, to which the life of the Hales 
conformed ? Because she had brought her sons up by exact 
rules, and younger minds than hers were weighing those 
rules, questioning their rectitude ? What tolerance the boys 
possessed was encouraged by Cyrus Hale, never by Doro¬ 
thea. The moment she made the comment, Barbara an¬ 
swered. It was no virtue, she said, to be conventional. 

" That’s a funny thing to say,” Geoffrey answered, since 
it was he to whom Dorothea had spoken. " Who says it’s 
a virtue ? Conventions are worth considering because 
they’re the safe path that men have taken the pains to make 
around a precipice. The casual traveler who makes one of 
his own over the top and down the sides may arrive at the 
same place if he’s agile and lucky, and then, again, he may 
go smash on the rocks.” 

" ‘ Danger,’ ” Barbara quoted with a touch of disdain, 
" ‘ the single quality of life that keeps you unafraid.’ ” 

Dorothea observed that they had gone a long way from 
the point. It was not a question of danger but of taste 
. . . the rather doubtful taste of making oneself con¬ 

spicuous. " There is no escaping the fact that he isn’t her 
husband. And that they ride together almost every day.” 

" But they’re such old friends.” 

" Still, in a country place like Wynville, people talk.” 


268 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ And does that matter very much ? ” Barbara asked in¬ 
differently. 

“ It matters to a husband to have his wife’s name bandied 
about the farmyards and kitchens,” Dorothea said. “ It’s 
a matter of taste.” 

“ The wildest imagination couldn’t make anything more 
of it than a small flirtation. And anyone with half an eye 
can see it’s not that. Miriam and Ruddy are like that. 
They like the same things. Neither one of them would 
care a hoot because people talked.” 

“ I am probably old-fashioned,” said Dorothea, “ but I 
cannot bring myself to believe that after marriage a woman 
should accept the same kind of attention from men that 
she had in her girlhood. Friendship is possible between men 
and women, better friendship, perhaps, than unmarried peo¬ 
ple can ever have because it’s franker and more imper¬ 
sonal ; but . . . hardly a flirtation. Presumably, in our 

day, a woman chooses freely to marry one man out of a 
world of men. It doesn’t seem illogical, surely, to expect 
her to abide by her choice.” 

“Not . . . illogical. But what if some other man 
can give a woman something her husband doesn’t? (Reck¬ 
less laughter . . . pleasuring . . . spendthrift joy¬ 
ousness. . . .) Marriage doesn’t sum up all the excite¬ 

ment one may expect in a lifetime, does it? ” 

Dorothea smiled grudgingly. She distrusted flippancy in 
women. “No two men give any woman exactly the same 
things,” she said. 

Barbara felt a sharp discomfort. With an intuitive 
knowledge drawn from the faces she had watched all her 
life, she found a query in Dorothea’s level gaze, judgment 
withheld. Something quite definite lay behind this dis¬ 
cussion. She had betrayed none of the resentment that 
mothers are apt to feel against the women who take away 
their sons. In her old eyes marriage was a necessity as 
much for the individual as for the race; but she made tacit 
demand for the security of her son’s happiness. Was she 
veiling, in this slight criticism of Miriam, her doubt of 


269 


THE HALES 

Barbara? Barbara’s thought leaped to Ruddy and to the 
past that she had not thought worth mentioning. Had Anne 
betrayed her? Had Dorothea found out about Ruddy? 
Did she think Barbara was using Miriam Goddard as a 
shield ? 

“ I know how young people feel,” Dorothea’s precise 
voice went on. “ I’ve heard women talk about their free¬ 
dom and the enrichment of personality that can be found 
in emotional experiences ... by which most of them 
mean just such small flirtations as you suggested. I know 
that there is a shift in standards which allows queer things 
to be done in the name of liberty by people who don’t quite 
know what liberty means; and everything helps it . . . 

cheap thoughts, shoddy morals, the get-rich-quick microbe. 
. . . Women won’t admit that sacrifice and responsi¬ 

bility make up the most of life and they run away from 
them. They run away from life. . . .” 

Barbara interrupted to say that she was sure Miriam had 
never thought of running away from life. She seemed 
always eagerly running toward it. 

‘‘Toward its emotional sensations,” Geoffrey interposed 
bluntly. 

Barbara’s mouth curled into a smile. Her voice held an 
habitual accent of mockery but there was a faint cold anger 
moving in her blood that frightened her. 

“ Rather amusing to see Myrrh measured by your con¬ 
ventional yardstick, Geoff. Emotional . . . because 

she thinks differently from you ? ” 

“ Thinks?” asked Geoff. 

Barbara continued smiling. “You might give us your 
entire opinion, now you’ve gone so far.” 

In five unvarnished sentences Geoffrey gave them his 
entire opinion. “ She’s capable of sacrificing everything 
and everybody. . . .” 

Instantly the thing had degenerated into a quarrel, a 
nasty, stinging quarrel having a deadly mockery. Barbara 
saw Geoff’s mouth set hard and his eyes grow sombre. She 
knew quite well what she was saying and had no wish to 


270 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

restrain herself from saying it. Words flashed like knives 
between them. She seized on the sharpest and stabbed 
cunningly again and again. She wanted to hurt him, to 
leave wounds that would gratify some savage hatred lying 
deep in her heart. But curiously her lips refused the harsh 
profanities that came pouring through her mind. . . . 

It was Geoffrey who retreated into silence. A new 
Geoffrey stalking beside her across the drive and down the 
knoll to the Little House, a Geoffrey no longer tender, 
capable of injustice and brutality. She felt his anger mount¬ 
ing against her and suspected shrewdly that it was not so 
much the fact of the quarrel which angered him as that 
the quarrel had taken place before the Hales. 

“ Not . . . sporting, that,” he said. 

“What possible difference does it make?” 

“ You knew I hated it. You knew my mother’d com¬ 
prehend. She goes below the surface. . . . Not that 

you’d care. Whatever I want can get chucked into the dis¬ 
card for all of you.” 

“ That is a lie.” 

“ My God, Barbara,” he broke off and looked at her 
through the night dusk as if she were an unlovely thing, 
“ I can’t reach you. Every chance I have of reaching you 
is spoiled by some dark caprice. It’s maddening. You’ve 
said you loved me . . . but you don’t love me. . . . 

It’s impossible to talk to you.” 

“ Then why attempt the impossible ? ” 

“ I can’t reach you,” he said again. “ And I keep won¬ 
dering if we’re going smash or if we’ll compromise on dull¬ 
ness and squabbles.” 

“ The usual marriage, you mean.” 

“ I know one thing,” he said heavily. “ I’ve never been 
so . . . lonely in my life. I didn’t dream there was 

such loneliness. . . .” 

She shivered suddenly, in ice from head to foot. “ The 
usual masculine excuse, I believe,” she murmured, “pre¬ 
liminary to the usual . . . masculine ... es¬ 
cape.” 


THE HALES 271 

“You make me tired,” Geoffrey said and went to bed 
without further speech. 

Barbara had expected further speech. The lust of battle 
was upon her. She wanted to go on, to achieve devasta¬ 
tion. Their recrimination gratified the savage thing within 
her. Every nerve in her body was tingling. She could 
hear Geoff’s step on the floor of the room above and, as 
she mounted the stairs softly, she saw the gleam of his lamp 
at the crack under the door. She stood a moment in the 
hall, listening, but when she realized that she was waiting 
in the vague hope that he would come out and say some¬ 
thing more, something that she could answer shockingly, 
she went into the guest room, closing the door and click¬ 
ing the key in the lock. There was no sound. . . . 

She opened the window, drew a low rocker close to the 
sill and sat erect, drawing in great breaths of the cold, 
frosty air. The stars were brilliant in a clear sky and a 
great stillness was on the fields. An instant later, she was 
amazed to feel tears falling down her cheeks. 

For months she had not cried. She had been lost in a 
gray sense that nothing mattered enough for tears. Now, 
in a moment, the cloak of her dreary indifference dropped 
away in tatters. The emotions that swept through her 
. . . her resentment against Dorothea and her implied 

criticisms, her unaccountable stinging anger, the wish to 
wound Geoffrey, thrusting at him with any weapon . . . 

were as swift and strong as any she had ever known. She 
undressed and lay in the darkness, coddling her anger 
against Geoffrey. She did not want him kind and tender. 
She did not want him to love her. She remembered that she 
had never loved him, and wished she had thought to taunt 
him with it. Strange, that the only thing Geoffrey roused 
in her was this ruthless antagonism. 

But suddenly, as if she had somewhere descended to the 
lowest dark and there been turned back because there were 
no further depths, her mood lightened and her thought. 
She flung one arm across her eyes and lay relaxed, almost 
in peace. Pure fancies began slowly passing through her 


272 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

mind like figures on a screen ... a stream where trout 
rose to Geoff’s flies and she lay on the warm bank above 
the water in the sunshine ... a candle-lighted table 
set against the wall of a crowded restaurant and Geoffrey’s 
gray eyes looking across it . . . she and Geoff tramp¬ 
ing a country road . . . the sound of music as she 

drifted through a dance in his arms. . . . Barbara Fal¬ 

lows sitting on the arm of Anne’s chair below the terrace 
at Pinelands watching Geoffrey smile at her, his white teeth 
flashing in his brown face. . . . 

Suppose, that day, instead of Ruddy it had been Geoff. 
Deliberately, she brought herself to thinking of that young 
Geoffrey as a lover, eager, passionate, not to be denied, and 
of that Barbara Fallows, untried and joyous. She could 
stand aside, a spectator of Geoffrey’s wooing, clean and 
fine and beautiful, of the girl who had happened to be her¬ 
self. She had so wanted to be all in all to someone . . . 

indispensable. For a breathless moment she felt his arms 
about her, his thick-lashed eyes close to hers, his young 
mouth . . . The next she was sitting up in bed, her 

burning face between her hands. 

“ Not love,” she was whispering. “ Not caring too much 
for anyone to be hurt. Not love . . . ever again.” 


V 

The postman left their letters in the box at the foot of 
the lane. As Barbara ran down to get them, she heard his 
high closed cart creak away and the jogging clack-clack of 
hoofs on the frozen road. It was January, a great sunny 
brazen day with the country roads rimed with frost and 
the hedges topped with snow. Suave white fields stretched 
to the horizon in a pale wash of sunlight. 

There was an unstamped letter from Miriam and Barbara 
opened it at once, puzzled that Myrrh, hardly half a mile 
away, should have found something to write to her about. 
“ Babs-honey,” she read, “ after all I am forced to ask 
you to pay something for those curtains. I hadn’t meant 


273 


THE HALES 

to, but needs must when the Devil drives. I need the money 
dreadfully. They were priced eighteen and there were 
seven and a half yards but I’ll cut it a third which is more 
than I’d do for anyone on earth but your sweet selfie. If 
you’ll have a check for me, I’ll stop in to-morrow on my 
way to town. Enar will deliver this.” But Enar hadn’t 
delivered it. It had been lying there in the box since the 
day before. 

The cretonnes had been hanging in the Little House a 
month. As Dorothea predicted the frail chintzes had not 
survived even the friendliest of washing and Miriam coming 
in on Barbara one afternoon had found her hopelessly try¬ 
ing to piece together the fragments. 

“ I’ve the very thing for you,” she said. “ Field’s sent 
curtains for my guest room five inches too short and left me 
without a leg to stand on when they produced the measure¬ 
ments I’d given them myself. It was that day Dirck was 
there and I will admit they might have been inaccurate. 
He and Miriam Goddard had other things on their mind. 
Dirck insisted on buying new for me since it was really his 
mistake. You might as well have these if they’ll fit your 
windows. They’re simply lying over there in a drawer in 
the highboy.” 

They fitted the windows perfectly. They hung beside 
the quaint squared panes, adding their gleam and glory to 
the faded little room. For once Geoffrey had praise for 
Myrrh’s generosity. . . . She calculated briefly as she 

went back to the house. Twelve times seven and a half. 
It was cheap enough, of course, for the quality of the 
hangings, but she had only her own money. Her check 
had come in the mail that morning. The unwelcome 
thought obtruded that Myrrh had known for years the 
exact day when Barbara’s check came, but she brushed it 
away a little impatiently, because Miriam had always been 
as casual about money as she. She bought what she needed 
or desired. That was all. Well . . . there was her 

own money and something left from the Christmas gift- 
check Geoffrey had given her, enough to cover. She could 


274 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

not ask Geoff for it. . . . Slowly she brought herself 

to the point of paying with the same nonchalance that 
Miriam had asked for payment. 

An hour later Miriam came in, ostensibly to show 
Barbara her Christmas gift; a bag with her monogram 
traced on the silver plate set into the fine alligator skin 
and on the back of the silver brushes. But her whole 
face, her eyebrows, her eyes, her pursed mouth made in¬ 
terrogation. “ Have you ... ? ” Barbara nodded. 

She was carrying her purse in the pocket of her apron and 
she made a slight motion of her hand toward the kitchen 
but Miriam did not catch the significance of the gesture 
and sat on, obviously waiting. 

“ I’m going up to town for the week-end. Wish you were 
along, Babs. ,, 

“ Paul’s away, too, isn’t he? What about Nancy? ” 

That, Miriam explained, was one thing she had come to 
see Babs about. She had made her engagement before Paul 
had thought of this trip and she thought he might have con¬ 
sidered her plans. But he didn’t. Signe had gone for Sun¬ 
day and the housemaid was irresponsible. So Nancy was 
with Enar whom she adored and who was devoted to her 
. . . that lovely old-world devotion of the true peasant 

for the manor-house. 

“ Are you leaving Nancy with Enar for two days? ” 

“ Babs-honey, you’ve done one of the most perfect little 
imitations of Paul I ever heard, if you but knew it. You 
had his tone to the life. Nancy is quite all right. It’s only 
that I wish you’d run over once or twice for the sake of my 
peace of mind.” 

“ For the sake of my peace of mind,” Barbara said 
clearly, “ I shall go over there this afternoon and bring her 
here for Sunday. Enar can go on his Saturday night bat 
without a hindrance. . . .” 

“ Telling her something, were you? ” Geoffrey asked. He 
sat down at his desk and began slitting envelopes and open¬ 
ing letters. Over the growing litter he grinned at her. 
“ Looked to me you spoke a little harsh.” 

“ I’ve rowed with Myrrh before this.” 


275 


THE HALES 

u Did she ask for a loan ? ” 

“ No” 

“ You gave her some money, Barbara.” 

“ My own money,” Barbara said evenly. 

“ For what? ” 

“ Something I owed her.” 

“ The cretonne curtains,” Geoffrey said. “ I thought you 
said she gave them to you.” 

“ I thought she had but I misunderstood what she meant. 
She did make me a wonderful price on them.” 

He was looking at her steadily with an air of considera¬ 
tion, the corner of his lower lip caught between his teeth; 
and there crept across his face its characteristic look of 
hardness as if the muscles stiffened slightly to make a 
mask. “ Does he think I’m lying to him ? ” she asked her¬ 
self and aloud, she said impulsively, “ Geoffrey, honestly, 
I didn’t know.” 

“ I can’t have you using your money for the house. 
You’ve little enough.” 

“ That’s absurd, Geoff.” 

“ How much was it ? ” 

“ Geoffrey, please. You paid all those hospital expenses,” 
she said, “ for me. It’s taken you more than a year.” 

“ How much did you hand her? ” 

Barbara’s shoulders moved in the faintest of faint shrugs. 
“ Ninety dollars.” 

“ Good Lord,” he whispered. He sat a moment, his fore¬ 
head resting on the palm of his hand, his eyes closed; and 
distressed as she was at her own short-sightedness, his con¬ 
cern seemed exaggerated, almost theatrical. Ninety dollars 
couldn’t be so important. 

“ I’m an extravagant old thing,” she said smiling a little. 
“ I don’t manage . . .” 

“We’ve no money for extravagances,” he said harshly. 
“ In another year . . . two years, things may pan out. 

There’s no money for extras just now.” 

She met the feeling in his voice with an answering quick 
anger. There were risks in such a situation. One could 


276 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

slip swiftly from smooth water into rapids. Dangerous. 
And it was becoming increasingly easy to quarrel with 
Geoffrey. Geoffrey had nerves, too. . . . She forced 

herself to speak quietly. 

“ Don’t let’s quarrel, Geoff. We mustn’t quarrel . . . 

not about money anyway. It means too little.” 

“ Little. You can say that,” he answered, “ because 
you’ve never been in debt. You never know what money is 
until you owe it.” 

Barbara laughed genuinely. “ I can say it because I’ve 
always been in debt. Debt’s my natural state, Geoff. I’ve 
had this allowance since I was fifteen and I’ve spent it, 
every cent of it usually, before it was due. I was in debt 
all the time I was in college ... to Anne ... to 
Miriam and Mrs. Wilson and any college tradesman who 
would trust me. I was in debt to John Garsh all the time 
I worked for him. I was in debt to a dozen people when I 
married you. Why, I’ve been in debt to Mark for 
years. . . .” 

It slipped out before she thought and the answering ex¬ 
pression on Geoff’s face startled her. He turned white and 
the consternation in his eyes deepened and mingled with a 
curious look of pity. His hands lay clenched before him, 
resting on the pile of scattered papers. He did not speak 
and Barbara went on, desperately trying to explain. It 
wasn’t money she had borrowed since her marriage but 
long before. She had gone deep into debt and Mark had 
offered to help her. Then while she had done a little the 
summers when she worked for Garsh, it was not as much 
as she’d meant* to do, not enough to clear her. Things 
were high everywhere. When she spoke of it Mark put 
her off, persuading her that he . . . 

“ How much was it ? ” Geoffrey asked implacably. 

Barbara shook her head stubbornly. The curtains had 
been bad enough, but they, after all, were facts in Geoffrey’s 
house. This was nothing that concerned him. This was 
her debt, not his. She could have bitten her tongue for 
having let the fact escape. 


THE HALES 277 

“ You . . . Are there really things you can’t tell me ? 
Don’t you owe me this ? ” 

“ I don’t know that I do. The thing happened years ago. 
I was in a hole temporarily and Mark offered . . .” 

He said one word contemptuously, “ Temporarily.” 

“ But I thought it was that. I thought I could manage 
to pay it back easily. Mark has been casual about it, 
always.” 

“ He would be.” 

“ I’ll pay him sometime, Geoffrey, out of my own money. 
It’s mine to pay.” 

“ I shall pay him to-day . . „ now. How much is 
it?” 

“ Oh, Geoffrey. How impossible you’re making it.” 

“ It is impossible as it is. An impossible situation for 
me. I can’t have my wife owing my brother money and 
face him. That’s all. It isn’t . . . sporting.” 

Sporting. It was Geoffrey’s word, the weapon with 
which he faced the business of living. “ We’ll go slow and 
I’ll manage a note at the bank if we’re stuck. How much 
is it you owe to Mark ? ” 

She told him. She watched Mark’s name appear under 
Geoffrey’s moving pen. The hated tears were in her eyes 
and she brushed them away fiercely with the back of her 
hand. Was she wholly without principle? Was there noth¬ 
ing in her to match with Geoffrey’s hard definiteness ? She 
had thought of his strength as a protection but she bruised 
herself incessantly against it. She thought rather bitterly 
that if she knew herself, if she knew what she was, she 
could know how to act. She would have known from the 
first. Other people . . . Miriam, Cyrus Hale, Anne, 

Mark, Geoffrey . . . each in his own way knew exactly 
what they wanted and she was groping always and con¬ 
fused. The impression that had come to her occasionally, 
of being in a maze and turning time after time, in the 
wrong direction, seeking something she was destined never 
to discover, came sharply to her now and she said: “ What’s 
the use of this, Geoff? Why don’t you let me go? ” 


m THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ Do you want to go ? ” 

The question was as swift and keen as a sword thrust 
and she faltered. She rose from the chair beside the desk 
where she had been rocking and went to the window, her 
eyes on the distant river, her fingers restlessly thrumming 
against the glass. 

“I’d hate it,” Geoffrey said. " Fve always felt that if 
you started the job, you’d best finish it. I’d hate the con¬ 
fession of failure, the mess and the gossip, the things we’d 
have to go through. But if you . . . you’re not happy 
. . . if you want to go . . .” 

“ It’s that I’m ashamed all the time to give so little and 
take so much. Taking taints everything. I’m useless here. 
. . . There was that long sickness the first thing. You 

can’t pretend it hasn’t been a burden, Geoff. I’ve known. 
With all your plans for experiments, to have to pay out that 
money for me . . . and you’d said from the beginning 

that you weren’t ready to marry. Now these things, these 
cretonnes and the money for Mark . . .” Her voice 

trailed out uncertainly and her shoulders moved just per¬ 
ceptibly. “ Why not? Call it a day,” she said. 

He came and stood beside her at the window. “ Barbara,” 
he asked earnestly, “ is it Mark?” 

“Mark?” She caught his incredible meaning. “No. 
Oh, no, Geoffrey.” 

“ But is there anyone ? Anyone who’d . . . figure, 

in a smash ? Anyone, I mean, that you . . . care about, 

more than you care about me ? ” 

“ No one. No,” she cried passionately. She looked re¬ 
morsefully at his strained, shadowed face. “ I care for you. 
I’m not fit to tie your shoe-laces, Geoff.” 

“ That doesn’t get us anywhere.” 

“But what can I say? What is there to say? I’m try¬ 
ing to say that it’s unfair that all the giving should be yours 
and all the taking mine. It isn’t fair. No one, unless it’s 
Anne, has ever done so much for me. You liked me and 
you married me when I asked you, because you pitied 
me. . . ” 


279 


THE HALES 

“ I married you because I wanted you,” Geoffrey said 
crisply, but there was a timbre in his low voice that touched 
her like a caress, “ beyond all other women. There were 
whole days, when you were sick, that I kept you from 
slipping out, it seemed to me, by the very force of wanting 
you. It’s a ghastly joke to have kept you one way and 
never to have had you. ...” A faint smile came to his 
lips and his eyes glowed but he did not offer to touch her. 
“ I’ve thought I could make you . . . come to me. I’ve 

thought it was because you’d been so ill that you seemed a 
long way off. When we came here, I thought that in just a 
little while we’d be riotously happy. . . .” 

“ I am happy, Geoff.” 

“ It isn’t the kind of happiness I mean,” he said wearily. 
“ Any fool can tell the difference.” 

“ What is the difference ? ” Barbara asked reasonably. 
“ A quiet happiness . . . and I’ve tried to make you 
happy, too. I’ve tried to . . .” 

“ Surrender.” 

“ I hate that word. You’ve used it more than 
once.” 

“ It’s a true word, isn’t it ? Be sporting, Barbara. Admit 
that underneath everything your idea of life with me is 
surrender. A submissive passion. You’d be the perfect 
marionette if I’d pull the strings. Yield your whole will. 
You’re trying to ‘ please ’ me. I can’t think where you 
get the idea. It’s the only sentimental thing about you 
. . . like a silly novel. But you’d let me direct exist¬ 

ence for you, say Yea and Nay, possess you.” 

Her hands flew to her hot cheeks. It was true. Looking 
back, she saw that for months they had been engaged in a 
strange struggle, a struggle in which she sought only sub¬ 
mission, having the wish to give up struggle and be done 
with thinking. 

“ I want you . . . unpossessed,” Geoffrey said 

slowly. “ I want you, your real self that I’ve glimpsed once 
or twice. I want you loving me because I’m the one man 
on earth for you or ever will be. I know what I want and 


280 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

I don’t change. I don’t want the ordinary thing. * * .” 

His eyes went past her face to the white fields and the blue 
ice of the river flaked with snow patches and he folded his 
arms tight with a gesture of repression. He said quietly, 
“ I was closer to you that day on the train in the storm 
than I’ve ever been since. Never mind that now. Here’s 
what I want to say. I spent a good bit of gray matter try¬ 
ing to make up my mind if I were falling in love with you. 
It went on for months ... all the time I was overseas 
and that year I was seeing you in Chicago . . . and I 

wasn’t sure; but I was sure when I married you. There 
was no other woman in the world for me after . . . 

after that night I took you . . . carried you in my 

arms ... all the way to the hospital, wondering if I 
could get you there alive. It was so far. . . .” 

A remote irrelevant question drifted to the surface of 
Barbara’s mind, something she had wondered about once. 
“ But why didn’t you take me to St. Agatha’s at once ? It 
was nearer, really, and it couldn’t have been so expensive. 
You hadn’t forgotten St. Agatha’s?” 

“No, I hadn’t forgotten.” A curious look tightened his 
face and his voice blurred a little. “ Stupid ... I 
didn’t think ... I didn’t know you wanted to go to 
St. Agatha’s then. . . .” 

“But why?” And instantly from his sidewise glance 
across her face, she knew why. For a moment, Barbara 
stared at him, as though trying to make herself disbelieve 
what she had seen. A pulse pounded in her throat and she 
pressed her hands over it to steady it . . . staring at 

him. The cracks revealed themselves in that armor-plate 
of her indifference so that she saw herself opposite Geof¬ 
frey in that quiet restaurant, saying confused words . . . 

(“If I were drowning, you’d come and pull me out, 
wouldn’t you? Without asking questions? ”) . . . and 

then further back and clearer Ruddy’s contemptuous voice. 
(“ Think Fd marry a girl like that? How’d I know it wasn’t 
a game ? ”) How had Geoffrey known ? “ You didn’t know,” 
she cried. “ You didn’t know what you were being let in 


THE HALES 281 

for. Or me. You didn’t really know ... me. I 
might have been anything. And you married me.” 

“ I’d have married you if I’d known for a certainty. I’d 
have married you if you’d committed all the crimes in the 
decalogue.” 

“ My soul and body,” Barbara whispered. 

She was using Miriam’s expletive. Geoffrey frowned at 
it a little and then, suddenly, took it for his own. “ I loved 
them both,” he said gently. “ I love you. Don’t forget 
that, ever, for one single moment. I’ve loved you since I 
first set my eyes on you and I shall love you till I die. I 
love you. . . .” It began as a challenge but it ended 

in a whisper. “ I love you . . . love you.” 

For all the longing in his face she saw in it the habitual 
hardness. She put out her hand to touch one of his whose 
fingers pressed tightly into his arm; but in a moment, as 
the sense of him spread along her nerves and seemed to 
possess her, she drew it back, standing quietly with a doubt¬ 
ful smile on her mouth. It would do no good to tell him 
that she loved him. He would come inevitably to know 
that she had lied a little. She had given him the little, 
thinking it was quite enough and he wanted the more, the 
spirit not the flesh. (So there were men like that.) He 
wanted love, honest and shameless to match with 
his. . . . 

How long the look between them lasted and of all there 
was iait she had no clear understanding. Wave after wave 
of feeling rushed through her as she saw the eagerness fade 
from his eyes and the curious look of pity creep back. She 
felt they were drifting apart. She saw slowly widening 
distances between them as of two ships moving away and 
with an involuntary gesture, she flung out both her hands. 
Geoffrey answered her huskily, as if she had spoken. 

“ That’s all right then, Barbara. That’s fine.” 


XVII 


THE COUNTY ROAD 

I 

Brave as it sounded, it was just less than the truth. The 
high moment passed and in the days that followed they 
dropped to the dull level of the commonplace. True, 
Geoffrey went about his usual work in his usual, offhand 
manner; but Barbara, with her sharpened sensibility, was 
aware of the tumult of perplexity that filled him. Geoff 
might scorn the antique idea of possession which gives the 
relations of men and women a cruel simplicity, and disdain 
to force love a hair’s breadth. But he wanted the whole 
of it and he was hardly the sort, possessing his soul, to 
possess it in patience. His moods swept in upon them in 
a wearying round, irritable moods, interrogative moods with 
questions knocking incessantly at his closed lips. (“If only 
he’d ask them,” Barbara thought.) Tenderness, offhand 
comradeliness, dissatisfaction because the exquisite thing 
he had thought marriage had, in some way or other, got 
spoiled, irritable moods. . . . And not one of them all 
escaped his mother. 

There had been the incident of the check returned to 
Mark, a scene left on Barbara’s memory with the clearness 
of an etching. Geoffrey proffered the bit of paper casually 
enough before the Saturday night dinner at Maple Hill, say¬ 
ing with a curiously uncasual stiffness, “ Something for you, 
old chap. I’d no idea . . .” 

And Mark had not been casual at all. He glanced at the 
written words and lifted dark, suddenly resentful eyes. 
“What’s it for?” 

“ Something I owed you.” 

“ You owed me. . . .” 



283 


THE COUNTY ROAD 

"You remember, don’t you, when you loaned it?” 

“ Look here, Geoff. We’ll talk this over later.” 

"Everything's said,” Geoffrey answered succinctly and 
only repeated it a different way when Mark protested, his 
thin face flushed, his mouth unsmiling. Barbara took no 
part in the controversy. She sat across the room, over a 
magazine, her cheeks burning with anger at Geoffrey’s harsh 
integrity and his awkwardness in handling the situation. 
Couldn’t he see that he was hurting Mark? He was hurt¬ 
ing him dreadfully, merely to have his own way, to set 
things right, as he saw them. Couldn’t he see that Mark 
winced under it? Dorothea saw. Her appearance in the 
doorway silenced their useless argument but Mark limped 
more than usual when he went into the dining-room: sure 
sign that his nerves were tense. And Geoffrey left the 
table-talk to the rest. Dorothea sat behind her coffee-pot 
watching, her dark eyes gleaming through her lashes. 

Toward the end of January the elder Hales followed the 
custom of their kind and left for St. Petersburg and Geof¬ 
frey and Barbara moved again into the sunny, spacious, 
austere room that bore the imprint of Dorothea Geoffrey. 
Mark came home less frequently. The winter went on, 
insufferably dull. The earth was frozen. Day after day 
the veiled sun hung in a gray sky and the fields gave back 
their perpetual monotony of white. Barbara hated it. The 
apathy of the winter before had gone with her convales¬ 
cence and in its place was a bitter, unsatisfied desire, a seeth¬ 
ing impatience at her lot. She yearned restlessly for the 
stir of city streets, for theaters and concerts, shopping and 
shop windows, movies, cabarets, music, for the hard clever¬ 
ness of talk that had been the note of her little hour. 
Miriam went up to town two or three times in the week, or 
for the gayest of week-ends, but it was a trip that cost 
money and with the memory of her debts paid out of 
Geoffrey’s slender store, Barbara held herself from the 
trifling expensive pleasures that had been a commonplace in 
Tower-town. Geoffrey denied himself so much. At least, 
she told herself, she could play the game ... be sport- 


284 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

ing. She rather held herself to that word ... a 

valiant, sturdy word. 

But it did not cure boredom. The undertakings of a 
country town bored her to tears. She could imagine that a 
woman might accent her serene, absorbed domesticity with 
the sort of thing that Wynville offered, luncheons, teas, 
“ club-work,” food-sales, “ Guild-work,” church suppers, 
dances, dinners, seeing the same people over and over; but 
Barbara was racked with monotony. She found it irksome 
even to go through the process of dressing for the event and 
she sat through interminable bridge games, depressed and 
silent behind her sweetly deceptive smile. 

Over and over again she told herself that this would be 
her life, this dreary grayness. She had dreamed fine 
dreams but no one had taught her how to live them and the 
old courage that had set her to find things out for herself 
had somehow dissipated. She had dreamed of beauty, of 
happiness, of vivid, joyous living and she had achieved a 
mechanical routine, a casual marriage. . . . 

And there was nothing she could do. She could summon 
no resources to combat the restless ennui that was on her 
. . . she who had been resourceful in her babyhood. 

She forced herself to a meticulous household order, she 
forced herself to an hour or so of sewing, and hated the 
shining needle that slipped slily in and out of the cloth, she 
forced herself to a routine walk at dusk. It was always 
the same walk ... up the lane and through the wood 
lot to a road that skirted Maple Hill fields, down the road 
to a bend in the river and a bridge, back up the highway 
. . . the County Road . . . two and a half miles. 
She walked automatically trying to get them done quickly 
and timing the process almost to the minute. The quiet 
almost deserted road, the hedges, the leafless vines hanging 
on the fences, the bare branches of the trees were exactly 
the same. At distant intervals the low outbuildings of a 
farm in some hollow reared themselves above the snow. 
Rarely did she meet a soul. The earth was empty and gray 
under a gray empty sky. 


285 


THE COUNTY ROAD 

Beyond these things, she was quiescent, finding one occu¬ 
pation as futile as another. She tried to practice and sat 
at the piano, pushing one piece after another aside, after 
the first half-dozen bars. She read until she felt stuffed 
with information for which she had no possible use. (She 
had not used anything that she had already learned.) And 
she smiled ironically remembering the great plans she and 
Anne had made, the exultant self-belief with which she had 
started out, armed with her rectitudes and uncertainties and 
laden with illusions like a caravel seeking an El Dorado; 
and all that had happened was that the caravel had drifted, 
aimlessly, into a backwater. 

She read . . . but the books had no relation to the 

life she was living. The philosophies that had sustained 
Anne Linton and the new yeasty theories that Miriam was 
quoting glibly alike filled Barbara with distaste. John Bur¬ 
roughs and John Muir, taken down from Cyrus Hale’s 
book-shelf in the farm office, bored her; psycho-analysis and 
history and sociology bored her and art which she tried hard 
to read because Wynville’s library boasted a particularly 
well-selected collection of books on the History of Art, due 
to a year of study under a teacher in the Woman’s Club. 
Fiction bored her most of all. With wearisome repetition 
the novels of the year pictured women who loved roman¬ 
tically, but never with the love of reality reaching fulfil¬ 
ment, who took life into their own hands. They constantly 
went away from husbands, from homes, from situations that 
proved difficult and found a use for their hands and their 
brains, working out the “ problem ” that confronted each of 
them to a triumphant conclusion. They chose activity as 
Barbara, left to any freedom of choice, would have chosen, 
breaking bonds, burning the bridges behind them ruthlessly. 

But Barbara’s problems somehow involved Geoffrey. All 
her life, since her first days with Anne, she had been ac¬ 
customed to take the consequences of her acts, to dance as 
she wanted but to pay the Piper when he asked his due. 
She expected to do it. “ I’ll take what comes,” she had 
said so many times to her secret self, “ I’ll pay . . ” 


286 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


Well, she was paying, now. Here were consequences. She 
had married Geoff, not quite loving him. “ Pve wronged 
him . . . wronged him,” she condemned herself in 

those long walks. “ I’d no business to marry him like 
that . . But would it be—well, sporting ... to 

leave him now because after a year and a half she loved 
him no better, now when he had said he wanted her to 
stay, when her leaving would humiliate and shame him. 
She had no one to blame but herself. At least one could be 
gallant if one were never happy. 

Only . . . was it all that life would ever hold ? Was 

she always to endure this meagre way of living, this gray 
monotony of skies and fields and river? She had not the 
courage to endure it. She could see her life stretching 
ahead like an endless county road, gray and empty, without 
a turning, laid down for her futile journeying. She tried 
Anne’s saying “ This, too, will pass,” but she had no com¬ 
forting belief in it. When she thought so much as a year 
ahead, she was vaguely reminded of eternity. 

At times she felt a wistful solicitude for Geoffrey. She 
liked him, feeling that he deserved more than she was capable 
of giving; and in an infrequent, softened mood, she could 
almost persuade herself that she would come to love 
Geoffrey with a love different in quality and degree from 
the rapturous gladness she had given Ruddy, a quiet affec¬ 
tion . . . but the feeling passed so quickly with her 

mood that she was never sure it was true, and there was 
no use in going to Geoffrey until it was utterly true. Once, 
killing an afternoon at the Wynville library, she read of a 
soldier-poet who had gained faith, he said, by praying for it, 
and it occurred to her that she could pray for love. She 
went out meaning to go to the little gray-stone church on 
her way home and she framed prayers all the way down 
the avenue and up the path to the door. But she turned 
back on the threshold. In her heart was the childish super¬ 
stition that her prayers were always answered and she did 
not want this prayer to have an answer. 

She did not want to endure again the pain of loving. She 


THE COUNTY ROAD 287 

was afraid of love ... not quite with the fear of love 
and of marriage rooted in the social frankness of her own 
generation, which was its characteristic ailment . . . but 
with a sharper dread. She thought of love as of a flame 
that had leaped and burned her. The burn was a scar now 
but its drawn edges were sore to the touch and the idea of 
abandoning herself to the same risk appalled her. When 
she contemplated it, she refused it. 

II 

The days lengthened. There was promise and deferred 
fulfilment in the sunlight and the southwest winds. The 
frozen crust of snow softened. The icicles, freezing under 
the eaves at night, melted by day, and brown leaves showed 
underfoot in the bare sunny places. The river ran free and 
black between its white banks. There were days of light, 
drifting snow, days of crisp frost and pale sunlight, days 
of soft rain . . . and presently red showed in the stems 

of the wild rose and lilac buds were fattening. One morn¬ 
ing a hardy robin sang in the elm, towering above the 
Little House. 

Toward the end of April a box came from Anne, some 
lingerie delicately embroidered, a summer frock, a broad hat 
with a wreath of silk flowers set about its crown and, packed 
carefully underneath, the brass-bound box that had held all 
Barbara’s treasures. She sat down on the floor, resting the 
box on her knees. “ Eighteen years,” she said aloud, “ I’m 
twenty-four. How funny to look back eighteen years.” 
Someone had given it to her filled with a doll’s ward¬ 
robe on her sixth birthday. She could remember the 
doll but not the giver, some man . . . Doctor Halforth 

perhaps, or Brach. The key was lying in her desk drawer 
and she took it out and opened the box. 

It was a small box, by no means full. She emptied the 
things out on the floor and sat looking at them, fingering 
them over. What faded things they were, what little things 
to mean so much. A knot of gold ribbon . . . she had 

worn that day she spoke the Interpreter’s part and Ruddy 


288 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


had kissed her. A dance program with the insignia of 
Ruddy’s fraternity. The silver pin of the Dauntless Three. 
A silk flower . . . she had worn that under the brim 

of her hat the day Ruddy asked her to marry him, the day 
she had met Geoffrey on the train. . . . 

The little heap of things tumbled together in the sunlight 
had belonged to Barbara Fallows; and Barbara Fallows no 
longer existed. They were like the treasures of a girl who 
had died. She slipped the tinsel knot from a thin packet 
of letters and shuffled them through her fingers, the letters 
she had written to herself that first summer when Ruddy’s 
did not satisfy her. Her smile took on an ironical edge. 
The sprawling writing, the blotted pages, the tricks of 
speech, the rich promises perjured a hundred times, were 
Ruddy’s, all of them. Had she, all those years, nothing of 
her own ? In the trumpery heap she tried to find one thing 
that was not his, a snap-shot, a dance-card. She spread 
everything before her and then, with a swift movement, she 
swept them all into the box and locked it. There was 
nothing. Nothing that was not his had mattered. “ Oh, 
Ruddy,” she whispered in the stillness. “ Oh, Ruddy . . . 
Ruddy.” It could not be true that he had failed her, that 
she was the wife of another man. Never. Never . . . 

never. They belonged together on a mountain top, far above 
the earth. “ But I mustn’t remember,” she said aloud. “ It’s 
no good remembering. It’s done with.” Day after day, she 
must hold back from remembering, destroying the links be¬ 
tween herself and the past, forgetting as Ruddy had for¬ 
gotten. . . . 

Just how much had Ruddy forgotten, she wondered. 

The knob turned in the door and Barbara lifted her face. 
“ Please don’t come in,” she cried impulsively. 

“ But I am in.” Miriam looked down at her from the 
square of light in the doorway. She was wearing a new 
spring suit, gentian blue and heavily embroidered, and she 
seemed pleased with it and with herself. “ Why in the 
world wouldn’t I come in? I haven’t seen you in a thou¬ 
sand years, Babs-darling.” 


289 


THE COUNTY ROAD 

Barbara got slowly to her feet and began to pick up the 
garments that had been in the box and pile them lightly on 
a chair. “ Anne sent me some new things,” she said aim¬ 
lessly. 

“ How nice,” said Miriam’s perfunctory voice. “ I’ve 
something to tell you, Babs, something big. I came over 
especially to tell you. Don’t bother with that truck now. 
Listen. I want to tell you what’s happened. It’s Paul.” 

“ Oh, Myrrh.” She folded her hands tightly with a 
sensation of inadequacy as if she had not emotions to fill 
up the reservoir Miriam continually emptied. “ What is the 
use of it? I hate talking about Paul.” 

“ But I mast talk. You’re the only one I have to turn 
to, the only person in the world who appreciates the situa¬ 
tion. My own people take Paul’s side against me, and 
Paul doesn’t understand me at all. He’s . . . unap¬ 

preciative really. He never thinks of all that I’ve sacrificed 
for him and done. He frets about Nancy every time I 
suggest going into town. He nags me about everything 
. . . Enar, the cook, the housemaid, household expense, 

my little pleasures. Last week it was my bag. He had 
just discovered, the poor dear, that it was alligator.” 

“ He thought you shouldn’t have bought it ? ” 

“ I didn’t buy it, Hon,” Miriam said drily; “ and to-day it 
was my suit.” 

“ It’s beautiful.” 

“ Isn’t it? That was the trouble. Paul gave me seventy- 
five dollars when I told him I needed a suit . . . with 

such a gesture of generosity, Babs, as if he were bestowing 
on me a gift that a queen might have envied; but when it 
came home he had the suspicion that even seventy-five 
might not quite have achieved this. Questions, of course, 
cross-examination, judgment pronounced. He has no con¬ 
ception of freedom, or of me as an individual. The mo¬ 
ment thunder began to roll in the distance, I decided to 
escape the storm. So I walked away.” 

“ But it must have cost more.” 

“ I should hope so,” Miriam said with an amused little 


290 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

smile. “ I admitted a hundred and twenty-five to Paul, but 
between you and me and the fence-post it was nearer two 
hundred. It’s worth every cent of it. Why should I take 
a shoddy something Pd hate forever when exactly the thing 
I wanted was there, on the next hanger? Paul’s point, of 
course, was that I’d spent more than he gave me, more, he 
says, than he could afford to give me. That’s Paul . . . 

haggling over a garment his wife needs, taking away all 
my pleasure in a lovely thing that satisfies me. Oh, we’ve 
made fine fools of ourselves, Babs ... I for Paul 
Goddard and you with Old Man Hale’s hired man. Women 
like us . . . Here’s a whole year gone out of life.” 

It was her own cry. A year had gone. Was she going 
to be wasted through all the years to come ? She wished she 
could understand the things that happened, but everything 
that occurred to her seemed as far beyond her compre¬ 
hension as it had in her girlhood . . . and she was leav¬ 

ing girlhood behind. The trumpery of her treasure-box 
had set a measure to the distance she had gone. 

“ I want to do what’s right,” she said. 

“ Quibbling, you are. There’s no one on earth knows 
you better than I do, Babs, and you’re doing what you’ve 
always done, trying to twist your personality to your Puri¬ 
tanic standards . . . self-discipline and a conscience 

scoured to the raw. Why won’t you be yourself ? ‘ God 

cares nothing for the Ten Commandments or the pure in 
heart.’ Moses did, maybe, but not God. For women like us, 
the old rules fail. Puritanism has failed, with all its dour- 
ness and smug hypocrisies. We can think things out for 
ourselves. Of course, you want to do what’s right. Most 
people do. But there is no need of using puerile prattle 
when you talk about it. What is right for women like us? 
We aren’t common women led through life on the usual 
nose-ring. We can think. We’re ripe for living. What’s 
right for me but this thing of choosing time after time, the 
experience that will make me live to the furthest reach of 
my capacities regardless of the old rules made before I 
was born? You have to think of the highest right. Why 


291 


THE COUNTY ROAD 

should life have bounds at all? We’ve come to know that 
the old idea of morality is the idea of repression and that 
most of the evil of the world is rooted in repressions, in 
what we’re pleased to call self-control. We married too 
young, both of us. And what do we get out of it? We 
ought to be making our own lives, caring for men who 
could give us what we wanted out of life. . . .” Sud¬ 

denly she began to cry, pressing her handkerchief against 
the corners of her eyes, looking at Barbara. “ I want to 
tell you the whole thing, Babs. We had this furious 
row . . .” 

“ Myrrh, please . . 

“ No, I want to tell you. Listen. I want you to know.” 
It was a relief to let go, to pour out everything. Barbara 
looked out of the window, giving herself to selecting the 
facts in the story. She was immensely sorry for Miriam 
but she had an instinctive feeling that the treatment in¬ 
cluded a hard logic. “ When you talk too fast, you cannot 
think straight,” Anne had cautioned her and there came 
back to Barbara a remembrance of the draughty stairs and 
the faint purring of the gas-mantle and the stiff brush tug¬ 
ging at her hair. Myrrh was talking very fast indeed. “ I 
went up to my room and after a minute Paul came in. I 
wish you’d seen his face, Babs, when he stopped by the 
window. I pretended nothing was the matter and went to 
reading and after a little, seeing I wouldn’t talk, he went 
down-stairs and out of the house, but he didn’t go into 
town, because in an hour or so, I heard him moving around 
in his room. I didn’t go down-stairs all morning nor for 
lunch and when Paul knocked I pretended I was asleep. 
Then when the house was quiet, I came away. I don’t 
know what to do, Babs. I’m going to leave him, I think. 
Live my own life. When I remember that I’ve given him 
a year of it . . .” 

The knocker fell against the door and they looked at 
each other in a startled silence. Barbara went across the 
room and opened it quickly. Paul Goddard was standing 
on the step. As he brushed past her into the room, she 


292 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

heard the quick intake of Miriam’s breath and her words, 
“ Why, Paul . . .” 

Her voice was richly smooth, almost tender. Her manner 
was perfect. This meeting, unexpected and significant, 
touched her sense of the dramatic and quickened her sen¬ 
sibilities. She could savor it to the full. Unconsciously 
she was acting, behaving like an emotional artiste in the 
penultimate scene of a play, the moment before the break. 
Barbara had the sensation of standing upstage watching a 
scene in rehearsal. Miriam crossed the narrow room and 
laid her hand softly on her husband’s arm. “ Paul, you’ve 
come to see Barbara. You want to talk. I understand. 
I’ll go.” She smiled at him as she stood drawing on her 
loose thick gloves. She smiled at Barbara and touched her 
cheek lightly as she passed her and went out the open door. 
(“But why does she slip out of it?” Barbara thought. 
“Why does she leave the discussion to me?”) She ac¬ 
complished a perfect exit, leaving them in a quiet mood, 
softened toward her and toward each other. 

“ You’re her friend,” Paul said. He sat down suddenly 
on the chair she indicated as if he were too tired to stand 
and put a shabby bag on the floor beside him. “ I felt that 
I could come to you. I don’t know what to do.” 

Miriam had said the same thing. “ I’m afraid I’m no 
help,” Barbara murmured, thinking that he showed the 
ravages of storm much more than Myrrh. “ I never quite 
know what to do myself. I go it blind.” 

“ Is she going to leave me ? ” 

“ I . . . don’t know.” 

“ She said as much to me. It ... it was unex¬ 
pected. We’ve had differences now and then.” 

“ Don’t we all ? ” Inane. But Goddard brightened. 

“ I suppose we do. I suppose we do. But to-day . . . 

You see I have to go away on a trip west for a client. I 
have to go. I cannot send anyone.” It was the fee, he 
meant. He had to have the fee himself. “ I cannot wait 
over. I ... I can’t take the time to talk things out, 
now with my train leaving in less than an hour. I tried 


293 


THE COUNTY ROAD 

this morning ... I stayed at home . . . and this 

afternoon Miriam went away without leaving any word 
where she was going.” 

“ Does she know you’re leaving on this trip ? ” 

“ Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I was packing when she went away. 
I had to see someone. It’s that I’m afraid she may be gone 
when I get back,” he finished simply and smiled at Barbara 
with eyes full of pain. 

In the light his face showed white and lined. She had 
seen him many times in the past year and thought of him 
very little. Now she began to think of him, watching his 
face. It was a fine, thin, sensitive face and his voice had 
surprising depths. 

“ It seems to me I could not bear a . . . break,” he 

said quietly after a full moment of silence. “ If Miriam will 
only wait a little, this can all be adjusted. I don’t quite 
know myself what the bitterness was all about. I’ve wished 
I could buy her more. I’ve wished I could buy her all the 
things she likes to have. This bit of a bag, for instance, 
that Gannet gave her for Christmas. It was a mere noth¬ 
ing to him, I suppose; and it seems he has always given 
her some little thing ever since they were in college. It is 
natural that he would keep it up.” 

“Yes . . . natural,” Barbara said. Only it wasn’t 

true. Ruddy hadn’t given her things in college. 

“ But it made me wish intolerably that I could buy her 
things like that, the kind of things she likes to have. She 
has such fine discrimination, such . . . taste. I’d like 

it. I’ve been pressed for money this year, Mrs. Hale 
. . . but I’d give literally all I have to make her happy.” 

“ I’m sure you would,” Barbara said. Idiotic to sit there, 
saying things like that. 

“Yes. That’s why it is so hard to see what’s wrong. 
Odd, isn’t it, that when a thing’s one’s own, one cannot see ? 
With a client one can almost always stand away and see 
where the trouble lies ... a little here, a bit there, and 
two sides always . . . and usually, when people are 

willing it can be remedied. In my thought there has been 


294 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

a good deal of contempt for couples who let their affairs 
crash when only a little real effort could have saved them. 
It’s plain enough when you stand outside, but now . . . 

I don’t know what to do, now that it’s come home to me. 
Miriam said she didn’t want the city and we bought Wood- 
lawn. I thought to myself that it would be a mighty pleas¬ 
ant burden to carry for her and for Nancy. I’ve always 
wanted a . . . home. My people died when I was a 

little shaver and I’ve had to shift for myself. I’ve earned 
my own way for nearly twenty years, and I’ve had to do 
without so many things to get ahead, to get an education 
and the law. I’ve never had a . . . home. My . . . 
my first wife was ill a great deal. . . .” He passed the 

back of his hand across his forehead and drew a deep breath. 
There was a short silence. Outside, Barbara heard a robin 
calling, a mating note, Geoffrey had said. “ So this home 
we bought meant a good deal to me. I liked it and I thought 
Miriam . . . liked it. But she says she hates it. She 

hates the country, she says, hates . . . Woodlawn. She 
said to-day that she hated it. But you know, Mrs. Hale, 
I’ve the desperate fear that it’s I she hates.” 

Another silence, filling the room. Miriam, Barbara mur¬ 
mured, swayed high and low, used the most extravagant 
phrases and always had. Words meant so little, after all. 

“ It’s more than words,” Paul said slowly. “ It’s a feel¬ 
ing. Something is there, between us, an undefined bitter¬ 
ness. I’d be so willing to go all the way, if I knew what 
the way was. I’m thinking of Nancy, too. ... I hoped 
you’d give me a clue, Mrs. Hale. You know . . . I’m 

sure you do know that I want life to be good to Miriam. 
I’d go all the way if it would show itself.” 

He stood up and drew on his coat, buttoning it absently. 
Barbara was unable to take her eyes from his face. She 
had seen him as Miriam limned him and never clearly. 
Now, standing there in his worn top-coat, his eager eyes 
scanning her face, his lips compressed, Paul Goddard 
seemed exactly the sort of man who would cherish the 
books she had seen on his table, the home that was a pleas- 


295 


THE COUNTY ROAD 

ant burden, the wife for whom his love was all tenderness. 
She saw him courteous and kindly, generous and in deep 
trouble and she gave him both her hands impulsively. 

“ What is it you want me to do ? ” 

“Ask her to wait. Persuade her to stay at Woodlawn 
until I can come back and we can talk it out. I have to go. 
I cannot stay over. If she will wait till I come back . . .” 

“ I'll see her to-night,” Barbara said. He gripped her 
hands hard in his and went out of the door. 


Ill 

Geoffrey was in the city for the day. Barbara broiled 
a chop and ate it with a slice of toast at her kitchen table. 
For a moment she was lifted out of her own brooding. 
Paul Goddard’s trouble had been too real not to penetrate 
her self-absorption. “ If Myrrh would go half-way,” she 
thought, and for the first time in her life, she had the wish 
to interfere in other lives, tangled like her own. 

There was a raw wind but it carried the odors of spring. 
The ground gave under her feet, soft over a layer of frost 
and a spring moon showed like a slender golden shaving 
above the trees. The lights at Woodlawn gleamed hos¬ 
pitably, in the kitchen wing, in Nancy’s nursery above, 
through the fan-light of the doorway, rose-red in the living- 
room. The outer door was ajar and Barbara slipped into 
the vestibule tapping at the glass of the inner door. Nancy’s 
nurse, on her way up-stairs, heard the tapping, turned 
hesitantly, and, after waiting a moment, came down to open 
the door narrowly. 

“ It’s only I, Norah. Mrs. Goddard is at home, I know.” 

“ Yes’m, but I . . .” 

“ Down-stairs, is she ? ” 

“ Yes’m; but if she’s seeing . . 

“ I rather think she’s expecting me. In here? ” Barbara 
crossed the hall and threw open the glass doors beside the 
stairway; and her breath caught as she stopped on the 

threshold. 


296 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

From a long, narrow table, the light of two shaded lamps 
centered on the davenport, set at right angles to the fire. 
Lounging on the davenport was Ruddy and Miriam was on 
the hearth-rug at his feet, one arm thrown for support across 
the couch, a look of languor in the line of her lifted chin. 
Barbara’s hand went to her throat with the old, childish 
gesture. She stood without a word. 

It was Ruddy who saw her first. He started up at some 
infinitesimal sound betraying her, stared stupidly for a sec¬ 
ond, got to his feet. Miriam, glancing over her shoulder, 
reached her hand to him for help and rose with an uneasy 
laugh. 

“ Funny, Babs. I was trying to get you on the telephone. 
Paul’s to be home any minute now and we wanted a game 
of bridge.” 

“ You knew Paul had gone off on a trip, didn’t you? ” 

“ Why . . . Babs . . .” Her voice faltered and 

Barbara did not bridge the silence with an answer. She be¬ 
gan backing away toward the hall. “ I won’t wait, thank 
you,” she managed to say, feeling that her one need was 
for escape. But, as she walked down the path, she heard 
the front door slam and by the time she turned again into 
the road, Ruddy was beside her, his hand slipped through 
her arm. 

“ You can’t go home alone, Babs. I’m going to walk with 
you.” 

She made no demur. Her mind empty of all emotion lay 
within her like a pool of still water. In spite of the faint 
scorn she felt, something of the old bodily ecstasy stirred 
at his touch. Geoffrey, Miriam, Paul faded from her 
thought. Here was Ruddy. She glanced up at his face, 
shadowed by the pulled-down brim of his soft hat. Spring 
. . . and a road. They had walked so together, how 

many times? 

“ Why wouldn’t you wait ? ” 

“ Wait . . . ?” 

“ I know,” he said hastily. “ It was an awkward minute. 
But you needn’t have run away.” 


297 


THE COUNTY ROAD 

“ I needn't have intruded in the beginning. I'd have un¬ 
derstood Norah’s hesitancy if I’d had my wits about me.” 

“ Norah.” He threw back his head and laughed. “ I 
suppose she pictures Myrrh as the heroine of the melo¬ 
drama she finds in her Fireside Companion. And the truth 
is Myrrh has rather taken to consulting me about her af¬ 
fairs. She sent for me this afternoon. Things aren’t easy 
there.” 

“ And she's talked them over with you ? ” 

“Wouldn’t she? It’s natural to turn to an old friend. 
But she lied about Goddard. You knew it instantly. Didn’t 
you ? ” 

“ Yes,” she made the effort necessary to further explana¬ 
tion. “ I saw him this afternoon, just as he was starting 
away. That was the reason I . . .” 

“ I don’t know why women lie when the truth's easier.” 

Barbara smiled in the dark. “ For the same reason men 
do, Ruddy. I should never call lying a secondary sex- 
characteristic.” 

“ It made it awkward,” he said uncomfortably. “ I wish 
she hadn’t, but you know as well as anyone what Myrrh 
is ... a good pal. Smokes with you, drinks with you, 
tries anything once. Myrrh at a man’s feet means no more 
than another woman waltzing with him, or playing golf. I 
wish you wouldn't judge her, Babs, on this.” 

“ I’m not judging her.” 

“ I am afraid you are. You're judging both of us. And 
the whole thing was nothing, really. I can explain every bit 
of it.” 

“ But why do you try to explain ? ” Barbara asked im¬ 
patiently. “ What does it matter? It is no affair of mine.” 

“No. I wish to God it were.” 

Something in his sharp-edged voice held her and she 
thought, “ How did we reach this point ? What have I said 
more than any woman would have said ? ” But she did not 
speak. She was being swept out over a sea of memories, 
remembrances of laughter and rapture and dreadful doubt. 
She remembered that only a few hours before she had been 


298 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

longing for the sound of his voice; and as if in answer to 
an unvoiced prayer she was walking with him along a 
country road. They were together. They could say any¬ 
thing they wished. 

“ I explain,” Ruddy said evenly, “ because what you think 
matters; whatever pleases you, whatever touches you for joy 
or pain. It's as true to-day as it was six years ago. It has 
been true too long for me to change it. You were unfair 
to me. All I asked you was a chance. You might have 
given me that.” 

“ Chance ? ” Barbara repeated. “ Chance for what ? ” 

“ Proving that I loved you.” 

“ But I knew that ... all the time,” Barbara said. 
“ It wasn’t . . . enough, Ruddy.” 

“ You said you didn’t want it and I thought that was the 
smash; but all the time, every day I was hoping to hear, 
and when I saw you again . . . that day in August 

. . . I knew I had never really given you up for one 

hour. I wanted you more than anything. I could have 
been faithful to you all my life.” 

“ Oh, Ruddy.” 

“ You think I couldn’t? I went home thinking that things 
were coming right after all and that I’d see you the next 
day and make you understand, but the next day you’d van¬ 
ished. I couldn’t get anything out of anyone at St. Agatha’s 
and no one was at your flat. I couldn’t find you. Then, 
one day, a month after, I ran into Myrrh and she told me 
you were ill. Anne Linton wouldn’t let me see you. A 
long time after that Myrrh told me you were married. Mar¬ 
ried. Why did you run away from me, Babs?” 

She did not answer. She thought of the fear in which 
she had fled to Geoffrey and the memory of Geoffrey 
steadied her. Her chin went up a little. 

“ It had never occurred to me that you’d marry anyone 
but me,” Ruddy said. “ I’m not used to it, even now. The 
moment I could find an excuse to see you through Myrrh, 
I came. There’s not been a morning this year that I haven’t 
thought first thing, ‘ Perhaps this day I shall see Barbara. 


299 


THE COUNTY ROAD 

Perhaps we’ll be alone and talk.’ But I gave you the im¬ 
pression of having accepted defeat and become the most 
casual of acquaintances. Didn’t I? Why do you suppose 
I’ve been coming to Wynville? Why do you think I’ve 
hung around Woodlawn, except for the chance of seeing 
you ? Why do you think I sold them the house in the first 
place ? ” 

Barbara laughed aloud. “ That’s a perfect thing to leave 
hanging in the air, Ruddy. But it occurs to me that you’d 
have hinted that pretty thing to any woman you happened 
to be walking with on a spring night.” 

“ But it wouldn’t be true.” She saw the mischief in his 
face and his eyes dancing with laughter. “ Said to any 
woman. Not to any woman in the world but you. You 
know it’s true when I say it to you. You know I’ve loved 
you . . . and took a poor way of showing it, maybe. 

But if I’ve hurt you, I’ve hurt myself more. No harm 
telling you once more ... I love you.” 

“ Don’t.” 

The word came involuntarily. Her eyes struck with dis¬ 
may went to his, and Ruddy laughed a little and drew her 
closer to him. 

" I’d have made you happy,” he said very low. 

“ Fragments of happiness,” Barbara gave back stubbornly. 
“ Moments of happiness and the rest pain. . . .” 

“ Babs, if you had trusted me . . .” 

“ Trusted you.” Her whisper was full of scorn. A white 
mist was rising on the river and a cold fog lay ahead of 
them on the meadows. The wind grown chill, shrilled 
through the trees, and there came back to her the feel of 
a cold March wind and rough bark under her fingers. Her 
heart hardened against him. 

“ I’ve not changed,” Ruddy said. “ Whatever I’ve done, 
I loved you. Deep down in my heart, I love you now.” 

“ Very deep down. And only because I’ve gone beyond 
your reach.” 

“ Have you?” 

“ Beyond your reach,” Barbara repeated, but she wasn’t 


300 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

at all sure. Passion, they had known, she told herself, but 
not love; and yet how does one separate and define love and 
passion, parts of one inexplicable whole ? “ It couldn’t have 
been real love, Ruddy.” 

“ Liar,” he said softly. “ You know it was. You know 
what happens to me now when my hand touches yours. 
Look here,” he fumbled in his coat and brought out a leather 
case and a bit of paper worn at the folds. “ There’s the 
first letter you wrote me overseas, after . . . when I 

thought you knew and had forgiven me. . . .” 

Blind with ignorance, she had been, not to have known. 
Jane Treves. She touched the letter with a curious finger. 
It had begun “ Beloved,” she remembered. How absurd that 
Ruddy the faithless should have treasured it. Surely he 
must have cared to have cared enough for that. 

“ Geoffrey cares, too,” she heard her voice saying ir¬ 
relevantly. That was the wall between them behind which 
she could take shelter, that certainty of Geoffrey’s love. 
The words were solid like bricks that her hands lugged 
out and piled high and mortared. She had meant from the 
first to crouch behind that wall of Geoffrey’s love and be 
forever safe. “ Geoff loves me.” 

“ I expect he does. I can believe he loves you,” Ruddy 
said grimly. 

“ And Geoffrey is my husband.” 

“ A spite-husband.” 

" No. That isn’t true.” 

“You’re not happy with him. Don’t you think I know? 
You’re not a part of him as you are of me. He hasn’t any 
better claim than I, not one so real. A few words mumbled 
over you don’t mate a man and woman. They’re nothing. 
I loved you first. I can make you happier than Geoffrey 
Hale could ever make you. I can give you more. That’s 
something, isn’t it, that might constitute a claim?” 

“ Hardly.” 

“ You’re standing between the two of us.” 

It was true. He spoke as if he guessed the old, still un¬ 
answered questions that tormented her. Whether in seek- 


301 


THE COUNTY ROAD 

ing to escape pain one did not sacrifice too much of com¬ 
pensating joy? Whether the wall was strong enough to 
hold against him, if he chose to batter it? Whether . . . 
eternal doubting question of protected women . . . 

safety were not after all, a dull thing devouring the very 
sustenance of life? Ruddy had not changed. He held to 
his hot impermanent desires with all his will. Everything 
except the thing he wanted at the moment dissolved into 
vapor. He was just Ruddy . . . the eternal lover 

. . . the Laughing Cavalier. 

They turned in silence off the road and walked up the 
lane to the Little House. Geoffrey was at home. The lamp 
was lighted and the glow inside showed about the uneven 
shabby shade drawn at the window. When they reached 
the gate, Barbara slipped inside and swung about to face 
him with a hard little smile. “ Good-night,” she said briefly, 
and at that Ruddy’s lips took on their crooked slant and he 
put his big gloved hands over her fingers, clasping with 
them the palings of the gate. 

“ I love you,” he said recklessly. “ Let him hear me if 
he can. I can’t help loving you; and you can’t help it 
either. All these days when I move around, knowing you 
are in the world and not with me, that’s what I remember. 
You’ve loved me . . . loved me. You can’t deny it, 

Barbara.” 

“ Why should I deny it ? It’s quite true. Only . . . 
it’s over, Ruddy. Done with.” 

“ It’s never done with. We’ve said things to each other 
that we’ll remember till we die. Nothing that anyone will 
ever say to us . . . any man or woman . . . will 

quiet those echoes. First love and best love, Barbara. 
We’re branded with it.” 

“ Burns heal,” she said steadily. Too steadily . . . 
and the merest fraction of a second too late. 

“ But the mark is there,” he said jubilantly. “ We shall 
never be whole, either of us. Your spirit, branded with the 
mark, and mine. ...” 

She managed a shaken laugh, retreating step by step to 


302 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


the stone before her low door. She leaned against it, her 
hand on the knob, and it occurred to her that the weight 
of her body against it . . . The door opened and shut. 

Barbara was gone. 


XVIII 


JUNE 

I 

Belladonna grew in the acres south and east of the 
Little House. It speared through the earth in low heavy 
tufts massed thickly at the root, spreading until the fields 
grew lush with emerald green. The days were long, with 
the sun rising after brief fragrant nights and measuring the 
hours across a span of clear turquoise sky to its setting in 
the scarlet and deepening purple of the west. Through the 
open windows of the Little House came pungent scents of 
clover and sweet grass; sleek waves of hayfields shone with 
the brushing of the summer wind; bees buzzed about the 
elder-bushes, wild roses bloomed along the fences. 

“ June is beginning/' Dorothea said one day, thoughtfully, 
as they drank their tea. “ Harvest is ahead. Harvest is 
the fact. You have to think of all this preparation as 
tokens of the fact to come." 

Tokens. Tokens of significant change in the air and the 
sunlight and the song of a meadow-lark; tokens of marvelous 
silent movement, of the turn of the wheel from the seed to 
the ripe grain. But between the tokens and the fact were 
to come long days of rain and heat, dust and sweat, human 
labor, human weariness . . . shoulders put to the 

wheel. Barbara hated it. She was out of step with that 
serene, resistless movement of the earth toward harvest. 
She felt its advance but she made no step forward with it. 
She wanted restlessly to be at something and there was 
nothing for her to do. There was, literally, no work for 
her hands among a myriad of hands vastly busy. She 
had nothing to give to life as she was forced to live it. To 
herself, she seemed wholly useless. But Ruddy and Miriam 
were useless, too. Barbara had an absurd fancy of them 


304 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

. . . the three of them, a Folly in his cap-and-bells and 

two attendant Pierrettes . . . linked arm in arm and 

dancing fantastically along the highway, unseen by the stolid 
farmer-folk, guiding their plows up and down the black 
furrows. “ A Pierrette,” she said to herself with an ironic 
smile. “ And I used to think of myself as a princess in a 
tower. Pm coming down in the world a bit.” 

As a matter of fact she saw very little either of Miriam 
or Ruddy. Myrrh had telephoned the day after Barbara's 
unceremonious exit from Woodlawn and explained that Paul 
had called from town five minutes after she left, to say he 
was not coming home. (“ Oh, give her the benefit of the 
doubt, Barbara. She may not have been fibbing after all. 
Too upset to listen to his exact plans. . . .”) In re¬ 
turn Barbara told her errand briefly. If Myrrh would wait 
at Woodlawn until Paul came back and talk it out. . . . 

“Of course,” Miriam said generously, “ I’ll give him 
every chance. And you’ll keep me company, Babs-honey.” 

But their intimacy lessened. Miriam was away a great 
deal and when they saw each other it was often with Ruddy 
as a third. Miriam was the pivot about which Barbara and 
Ruddy manoeuvered, smiling politely across her laughter. 
For weeks Barbara, managing rather deftly, did not see 
Ruddy alone. Their meetings were quite casual; and much 
less infrequent than merely casual meetings would have 
been. Barbara wondered how long it could go on without 
Myrrh suspecting her. She knew that Ruddy planned them, 
arranged them, anticipated them in the intervening days; 
and she came to feel their laughter like a shaft of sunlight 
striking across a gray world. She went back to sensations 
that had been blurred by the innumerable events of the last 
five years. That marvelous combined cinema and gramo¬ 
phone called memory would give her back pictures and 
sounds as vivid and strong as they were in the beginning. 
Gradually she went back to the past, filling her idle days 
with memories. Ruddy’s imperishable reality came back to 
her. She saw him as the boyish lover who had turned her 
palms upward and held them against his lips in that sweet 


JUNE 305 

secret caress of theirs, who had said, “ Whatever you say, 
Babs, always.” . . . She lay through white nights reliv¬ 

ing the tumultuous joy she had known with the fancy of 
that imagined mountain-top, rearing above a crystalline void, 
where no one had ever been with her save Ruddy. The old 
June madness touched her. It was hard, increasingly hard 
to leave that region of luminous fancy and come back to 
the reality of washing dishes and sweeping floors in a Little 
House. . a . 


II 

White nights. 

She pulled her bed cornerwise in her room, close to a 
low window and lay wide-eyed in the darkness. Through 
the window she could see the black masses of trees against 
a lusterless immensity of sky and hear the faint rustling of 
the leaves. The short June nights changed with the chang¬ 
ing earth . . . nights when a full moon scudded 

through mounting clouds and threw fantastic shadows on 
the fields . . . nights of lilac mist and brooding si¬ 
lence . . . nights of grave, quiet beauty and velvety 

darkness . . . nights with the drip of rain on the roof 

above her and a wet wind brushing her face . . . and 

always, in the end, the gradual fading of the dark in the 
east and the clear etching of distant trees against the pale 
streak on the horizon that preceded dawn. 

Barbara gave herself to those wakeful nights with a kind 
of terror. Her dread concentrated with the approaching 
twilight and she clung to the lamp and her book, dreading 
the night, dreading sleeplessness so much that she was al¬ 
ways finding last moment excuses for putting off the time 
when she must climb the steep stairs and shut herself into 
the dark. It wasn’t every night, but the wakeful ones fol¬ 
lowed each other with an increasing frequency that fright¬ 
ened her; and their causelessness frightened her even more. 
There was no reason. 

At last she sent impatiently to Anne, begging for powders 
but pledging her to secrecy. “No need, you see, to worry 


306 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

poor old Geoff.” Anne sent the powders. She also sent a 
letter, a queer letter, imperfectly elucidating one of her 
theories. “ A woman is an instinctive being, Barbara, how¬ 
ever much we loathe admitting it. Instinctive in her emo¬ 
tions, instinctive in mental processes, oftenest instinctive 
in her reasoning. There are those who will tell you that 
the rarest of all mental qualities is the capacity to think 
straight, and that judgment untainted by an admixture of 
moods is the highest mental quality. Most instincts are es¬ 
sentially judgmatical, representing the acme of clear think¬ 
ing, even though it be group thinking and antecedent to the 
individual. The wise woman trusts them, knowing that to 
act against her instincts is to be thrown into suffering and 
confusion. You might read Be on. Try that before you 
try the powders; and do not i a single powder more 
than you can do without.” 

Barbara did not read Bergson; and in the end, she took 
no powders at all. She was afraid to take them. Drugs 
loomed before her, a vague menace, monstrous even as a 
last resort. She was quite ignorant of medicine and she 
remembered stories she had heard of women who succumbed 
to the lure of drugged peace, and weird pictures of livid, 
twitching faces with bleared eyes and loosened lips. She 
tucked the papers into her glove-box and endured sleepless¬ 
ness when it came. There was no reason for it, as there 
had been once or twice before in her life . . . that 
night, for instance, when she had wakened suddenly to the 
rapture of loving Ruddy . . . that other night, for in¬ 

stance, when she faced the certainty that she did not love 
Ruddy enough. . . . Instincts had nothing to do with it. 

It was only that the moment her head touched the pillow, 
she was broad awake. Memories trooped through her 
thought, tiny unpleasant memories that smarted. . . . 
The Beautiful Lady wincing under the subtle lash in her 
husband’s voice, her feeling of guiltiness about Dreke Mase¬ 
field, Nelle Palmer’s aloofness, Ruddy handing over his 
visored cap. The remembrances of joy eluded her. Yet she 
felt that those years had a shimmer of joy upon them, like 


JUNE 307 

sunlight lying on the fields; and when, at last, she reached 
the thought of Ruddy, the sense of that fled joy came back. 
Night after night, she told herself that she would not think 
of Ruddy but in the end the thought of him possessed her. 
The memory of his voice came back like music. . . . 

Ruddy loved her. Perhaps that should have been enough. 
If she had but shut her ears and eyes, believing in him 
against the evidences of her own senses, taking whatever 
joy came to her with his loving and enduring the pain, she 
might have found the happiness she sought. Faithful or 
unfaithful, he had loved her; and she had gone away be¬ 
cause she wanted peace and freedom from loving him. 
And security. But she had found none of them. She was 
no more certain of herse^ior what she wanted out of life. 
She was no nearer 1 ;piness. She tried thinking it 
out. . . . 

At seventeen she had believed that love was all of life 
and very beautful. But her experience in love had gone 
wrong. It didn’t matter how, because there could be a 
million ways, likely, in which so ethereal a thing as first 
love could go wrong. The thing that mattered was what 
she had done with it. It puzzled her that she had ap¬ 
parently done nothing with it. At first she had dodged it, 
trying to pretend, but there was no use in pretending since 
it only made the pain worse and made it last longer. Then, 
when she had been afraid that against her will she would 
drift back to Ruddy, she had run to Geoffrey. Geoffrey 
saw a Barbara Ruddy never had. Ruddy was an experi¬ 
mentalist in love, and from the first there were innumerable 
things that it was not possible to share with Ruddy. She 
felt as if she stood before him, holding out her hands to 
give him rare lovely things that Ruddy never saw. He 
wanted only her eternal kisses, her mouth. Geoffrey was 
different. Hours at a time, physically neutral, she could 
enjoy Geoffrey’s strength, his comradeliness. But she did 
not love Geoffrey. . . . 

It was love that she resisted. She did not want to love 
him. She wanted a good many things, absorptions, joy, 


308 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

pleasure, excitements, but not love. She thought ruefully 
that being loved was but half a loaf and that response was 
an indivisible part of the whole, but in her there seemed to 
be no response. No emotions flowered into life. She never 
wanted to love . . . anyone, again. She could see 

ahead and she dreaded the abandon of it, the intensity of 
feeling, the drain on her courage. “ If you care too much, 
you’ll be hurt.” Love was a risk. But even Barbara smiled 
in the dark at the absurdity of a human woman choosing 
not to take the risk. . . . 

Granted that a woman did not love her husband, what was 
the decent thing to do? “God cares nothing for the Ten 
Commandments or the pure in heart?” For just what did 
a nebulous God care? Honor, loyalty, marriage vows? 
Weren’t they empty husks, really? Weren’t they, after all 
was said, man-made conventions, rules that men had set 
for each other over and over through long-past ages, and 
then broken over and over. To choose this, they told you, 
was “right”; but that was “wrong.” (And they’d been 
specially fond of telling women what was “ right ” and 
“ wrong,” setting up as womanly the dull virtues, meekness, 
obedience, docility, chastity which they didn’t want for 
themselves. Somebody had to have them so they made 
them rules for women and defined a code of narrow duties. 
Their favorite indoor sport for centuries.) Right and 
wrong might mean something, but what? One day when 
Barbara Hale had slipped out of life what would have been 
gained because, by all the traditions, she had done “ right ”; 
or lost because, back somewhere, she had done “ wrong ” ? 

Why shouldn’t one do as one chose? Why was it im¬ 
portant particularly? Considering that the world had swung 
along hundreds of millions of years, how could any act of 
hers make a difference? Right ... or wrong. She 
could go on for years, all her long life, living as Dorothea 
Hale had lived, laboriously, austerely, in a kind of rigorous 
peace . . . but the woman who lived with Ruddy Gan- 

net would live beautifully, in fragrant, softly-lighted rooms. 
She would have jewels and exquisite garments, delicate 


309 


JUNE 

foods, soft beds and, to her heart’s content, pleasuring 
. . . the swift, rich pleasuring that Barbara had tasted 
for a little while . . . theaters, concerts, opera. It was 
a sordid comparison, perhaps, given a materialistic basis. 
But wasn’t it, by and large, the fair comparison? Would 
not that possible Barbara Gannet possess a beauty and 
graciousness of living that a Barbara Hale would never 
know? 

She had only to make one gesture. Ruddy was waiting 
for that gesture. He wanted to give her back the wonder¬ 
ful past, to take her again into that young, eager passion 
that had been wakened with his first kiss. That was what 
he meant. It took one act of courage on her part, ten min¬ 
utes with Geoffrey. A word would change everything. 
Suppose she told Geoff that she had married him in a 
frightened moment, on impulse . . . and that she was 

sorry for that impulse. She would not even need to men¬ 
tion Ruddy. After a few months when everything was set¬ 
tled, she could send for him. This, too, would have passed. 
The old joy would begin again. . . . 

But would it ? It was Barbara Fallows who had had her 
hour of enchantment, who believed in the rapture and cer¬ 
tainty of life; and she was a different being, Barbara Hale, 
not Barbara Fallows, past that faith by many months of 
experience and disbelief. Ruddy offered certainties, to be 
sure, hours of gaiety, laughter, but never the first fine rap¬ 
ture . . . inevitable hours of doubt and pain. Geof¬ 

frey’s certainties were different. 

Not sporting, exactly, to hurt Geoffrey, considering every¬ 
thing. She winced at the thought of hurting. A weak fear, 
perhaps, but part of her. Besides there was always change 
to be counted on. “ This, too, will pass.” There was an 
eternal mutability of things, the passing of the present. 
Days slipped like sand through one’s fingers and became the 
past. Sporting, wasn’t it, to wait a little, until the event 
pointed the way ? Sporting. . . . Night after night she 
came back to that. 


310 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


III 

She had come back to it one night when, with her face 
turned toward the window, she saw that the east was red¬ 
dening, not with the faint, slow rose of dawn, pulsing 

through the horizon grayness but with a swift color that 

deepened as it mounted the sky beyond the trees and hills 

. . . and in the next instant she heard, faint and far- 

off, the siren alarm at Wynville and with it, the thud of 
Geoff’s bare heels on the floor of the next room. 

“ Is it fire ? ” she called excitedly. “ It’s over east, I 
think, across the river/’ 

“ We’ll go.” He pushed open her door and stood between 
her bed and the window. “ Everyone in the county will be 
there. It’s a social event ... a fire. One of the Hun¬ 
garian’s places. Hurry up if you want to see it, Barbara.” 

She wanted to see it. The word was like some abacadabra 
springing a trap-door in her brain and letting loose a multi¬ 
tude of half-forgotten fancies. Her thoughts grew vivid 
and her excitement mounted until it seemed to her that 
every nerve in her body tingled with expectancy. Her 
hands trembled as she fastened her frock and tucked her 
hair into a net. Above the candles on her bureau she could 
see her face smiling darkly, her eyes shining. 

By the time Geoffrey came for her in the farm roadster, 
the highway was alive with cars. She could look back and 
see lights flashing in long parallels beyond the crest of the 
nearest hill and appear one by one over the top, melting into 
an irregular, wavering line of circles glowing behind them. 
Horns blew incessantly. Cars darted past them, high laugh¬ 
ter trailing back and shouts of recognition. “ Geoff . . . 

Dubinski’s farm. . . .” “ Oh, Geoffrey Hale and 
Barbara.” In the narrower road across the bridge the press 
thickened. All the farms were dark and silent, but toward 
the east, flames leaped above the low ridge of hills, and 
when they went on, turning at a corner hidden in the black 
shadows of tall trees, they saw, suddenly, the blazing fires. 

Barbara drew a long, shivering breath. Here was reality, 


311 


JUNE 

infinitely more beautiful than the familiar image of her 
thoughts. At the height of the upland, two great barns 
were burning, the flames leaping to a tremendous height 
above the tiny figures of the men who fought at them. At 
the back where an ancient corn-crib was ablaze, the fire had 
a color nearly white, bursting through the black bars in 
tongues of livid flame; but at the heart was a rectangle of 
royal purple breaking into violet and mauve and gold and 
orange sheeting up and up until the palest of yellow flames 
went out against the deep night-blue of the sky. The heat 
was suffocating. For a circumference of a hundred yards, 
every fence-corner was alight and in the lane, where the 
machines had come to a halt, the hot air broke over them 
in irregular waves. The horns had grown quiet. Even the 
noise of talk and exclamations stilled. For a long time 
there was no sound except the hiss and crackle of the flames 
and the occasional calls of those small, gnome-like figures 
scampering, bent and black, about them. The heavy over¬ 
head timbers fell one by one, tipping into the devouring 
furnace, breaking into shifting colors, rose and gold, send¬ 
ing up a fountain of golden sparks high into the air. A 
quarter of the roof fell with a soft crash and the side walls 
bent slowly inward, sheeted with fire. Once, two men drew 
out a wheeled hand-cart and ran, dragging it behind them, 
its rails blazing, the spokes and fellies of its wheels a mass 
of flame. A whisper of laughter followed them and their 
salvage, but that died fitfully and again there fell the stir¬ 
ring silence. . . . 

“ Want to get out ? ” Geoffrey asked, but Barbara shook 
her head. She looked up and surprised tenderness in his 
eyes, but they did not speak. When she turned away lift¬ 
ing her face to the wild beauty of the fires, she felt him 
putting himself skilfully between her and the passers-by. 
He had been right. All Wynville, all the county was there. 
The lane and the road behind it were black with cars. Peo¬ 
ple from Wynville, from Blair, from the west roads, passed 
them continually. Two farmers, one with a sleepy child in 
his arms, leaned against the roadster and talked with a de- 


312 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

liberation that had impressiveness of the crops, of Dubin- 
ski’s possible losses, of needed rain. After an interval 
Geoffrey spoke again. “ There’s Gannet over there. 
Funny he’d be here this time of night.” 

“ What time of night is it ? ” 

“ Past one.” 

She recognized him at the wheel of his gray racer with a 
sense of shock. He looked so old. The yellow light of the 
fire fell on his face bringing out detail as it brought out 
the Queen Anne’s lace running riot in the fence-corners 
and the delicate trailing of the wild grape along the wires. 
Settled lines showed at the corners of his mouth and the 
flesh thickened about the lips and sagged softly heavy at 
the jowl, blurring the clean line of the jaw. Ruddy was 
no more than twenty-eight, but in the leaping firelight he 
looked years older than Geoff, older than she had imagined 
Ruddy ever would. She looked and looked intently trac¬ 
ing the change, convincing herself of the incredible. It 
w r as the odd glare of the fire. . . . Words shot up into 

her mind, “ Baldur the Beautiful is dead ... is dead,” 
a fragment of something. 

Geoffrey bent toward her. “ What did you say, Bar¬ 
bara? ” 

“ I want to go home, please.” 

It was only then, after minutes of watching, that surprise 
came to her because Ruddy was there at all. 

The fires had lessened. The flames were lowering and 
the white tongues licking along the wood had taken on a 
tinge of rose. Burning below were heaps of red embers 
edged with small wavering blue flames. Machines were 
moving out slowly, swinging from the lane into a long pro¬ 
cessional. From the other side of the river, they could see 
the light still flickering behind the blurred line of trees and 
a pale glow in the sky, coloring the river a faint 
pink. . . . 

IV 

On the fields around the Little House, moonlight fell in 
a pale flood. Everything was extraordinarily still, extra- 


313 


JUNE 

ordinarily cool and remote. The noise of the roadster as 
Geoffrey backed down the lane and rattled across the knoll 
to the garage, fell harshly on the silence. Barbara sat down 
on the stone step before the door, feeling the throbbing ex¬ 
citement ebb slowly from her body. She felt herself drift¬ 
ing slowly into peace ... a peace that was part of the 
night with its sombre shadows and silvering lights. An 
occasional automobile passed, but not often, not enough to 
mar the stillness. She walked across the grass, watching 
the river that moved with a lazy ripple under the moon. 
An elderberry bush stood close to the road, its perfume 
heavy on the air and its white blossoms lying on the dusk 
leaves, motionless, crisply cold in the moonlight. As she 
stretched up her arms to pull down a heavy branch, Barbara 
felt the light from the lamps of a car sweep over her. The 
car did not pass. It stopped and Ruddy got out and walked 
toward her. 

Suddenly she was afraid. She was afraid of what he 
might say and the answers she would give back, afraid of 
what was behind the smile that set its crooked curve on his 
mouth. The same fear of her own ineptitude that had sent 
her to Geoffrey. ... As he came close to her, she 
turned a little and cupped her hands at her mouth. 

“ Geoffrey,” she called, “ Geoff . . . Ruddy Gan- 

net’s here.” And as if in answer Geoffrey appeared at the 
foot of the lane. 

Ruddy did not speak. He stood quietly watching her 
face with his habitual expression of faint recklessness and 
thinking that she looked vivid in her white gown before 
that flowering shrub, too vivid, perhaps, and vaguely pathetic 
besides with her air of self-mastery. He understood per¬ 
fectly what she had done . . . and why. Barbara saw 

his understanding in his slanting look and deepening 
smile; but he said nothing even when Geoffrey’s shadow 
mingled with that of the tall bush. And an awkward pause 
ensued. 

“ Won’t you come in? ” Geoff asked simply. “ It’s after 
two. Get hung up somewhere ? ” 


314 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Ruddy laughed. “ Rather.” 

“ You’ll be till daylight driving into town. Better finish 
the night here.” 

“ Thanks. That’s hardly possible.” 

“ Why isn’t it? We can put you up. Come in.” 

“ Into your house ? ” Ruddy gave back sharply with an 
unmistakable significance. Astonishment came into Geof¬ 
frey’s face and he swung about. 

“ What the hell’s the matter with my house ? Isn’t it good 
enough for you? What d’you want, anyway, Gannet?” 

“ I want your wife,” Ruddy said coolly. “ I love her.” 

He did it deliberately. He was showing her that not 
even the protection of Geoffrey’s presence would shield her 
in the crisis. They were going through with it, all of it; 
and she would choose. Barbara’s swift look traveled from 
one face to the other and she thought suddenly that they 
were too young, they three standing in that flood of moon¬ 
light, too desirous. They should have been thirty . . . 

forty . . . fifty, beyond the years when love hurts. 

They should have been older, before they came to this. 
Ruddy’s glance met hers coolly. This was the old Ruddy, 
uncaring, not to be denied his whim, flinging restraint and 
caution to the winds. . . . 

“ Perhaps,” he went on looking at Barbara while he spoke 
to Geoffrey, “ you don’t know what it means to want an¬ 
other man’s wife. You don’t know what it means to feel 
that she belongs to you by every decent law of love 
and have to think of her, day after day, in another man’s 
house . . . sharing his life. I can’t keep silence any 

longer.” 

“ So that’s why you’re here this time of night,” Geoffrey 
said. He seemed quite emotionless, and rather grateful for 
having a point cleared up that had baffled him; as though he 
found Ruddy’s revelation interesting. He folded his arms 
in his characteristic gesture of repression and waited for 
an answer, but Ruddy did not give him an answer. He just 
stood, smiling a little. After a moment Geoffrey spoke as 
if a new thought had come to him. “But t f . did 


JUNE 315 

Barbara know you loved her? Have you . . . known, 

Barbara ? ” 

“ Yes. I’ve known.” Her mind was singularly clear like 
a precise piece of machinery in which every working part 
was visible, but it was difficult to keep her voice deliberate 
like the voices of the men. 

“ How long? ” 

“ Oh ... a long time.” Here was a beginning. 
“ Do you remember that day when we were in the pageant, 
Ruddy and I, and we three went down for tea and cakes? 
That day. Ruddy told me that day.” 

“ Just kids. . . ” 

“ Babs was seventeen about,” Ruddy said. “ I’m sorry, 
Hale . . . hard for all of us, this is. But I love her. 

Just as much as you, I love her. She was my girl . . . 

all the time we were in college ... all the months I 
was overseas. There wasn’t anyone else for either of us, 
really.” 

“Ruddy . . .” 

“ It’s true, Babs. Not really. I can’t believe she doesn’t 
love me now. Nor that she wouldn’t marry me if she were 
free.” 

“ Ruddy, please.” 

“Oh . . . why not thrash it out? Why should all 

three of us pay through the nose? You can see she isn’t 
happy, can’t you? Can’t you? Do you know what that 
means to a man, seeing the woman he loves not 
happy ... ? ” 

“ Yes. I know what that means,” Geoffrey said, and after 
a silence, he added slowly, “ I rather . . . respect you 

for speaking out. It’s only that I want to get it straight, 
the whole of it. If you’d thought of marrying her . . .” 

“ Thought of marrying her.” Ruddy’s laughter was his 
reckless smile done into sound. “We rowed, of course. 
Lovers’ quarrels. She’d quarreled with me the day before 
she married you.” 

Quarreled. The word shocked Barbara. That funda¬ 
mental revolt against an incessant turmoil of doubt and 


316 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS. 

pain, that hard struggle . . . did Ruddy think of that 

as a lovers’ quarrel? Was it about things of that sort that 
lovers quarreled and made up? It wasn’t the whole of it, 
not what Geoffrey wanted. Ruddy wanted his way and he 
had forced the issue cruelly, dealt a blow to Geoffrey, 
cheated. . . . 

“ Ruddy, go home/’ she cried at him. “ Go home. I’ll 
talk to Geoffrey. . . . Not you.” 

And somehow she was walking with Geoffrey across the 
grass, explaining, talking . . . trying to smooth away 

the look on his sombre face. 

“ But you did love him, Barbara.” 

“ Yes. I did love him. All the time that I was growing 
up, I loved him. Why, Geoffrey, every pulse in my body 
used to pound when he went past me. First love is real for 
all that people laugh. To a girl, at least. Men, perhaps, 
don’t understand . . . but to a woman love is the real- 

est thing there is . . . the inward reason for existence. 

Life begins when it comes to you. You’ve waited for it 
. . . and on how you take it and what you do with it 

depends the sort of woman you are. Always. Whatever 
theories you have about independence and freedom, it seems 
the deep down reason for your being alive. That’s how 
real it was to me. I somehow never planned anything for 
myself. Some women can take . . . love in their stride 

and fill in with other things ... a career, interests. 
Sane women; but perhaps I’m not very sane. Nothing but 
Ruddy mattered. I knew rapture at first, loving him, and 
I knew the sharpest pain . . . sickening pain. There 

were a lot of . . . other women, Geoffrey.” 

But Geoffrey heard that calmly. “ It’s to be discounted. 
After a man meets the right woman, he leaves all that be¬ 
hind him.” 

She could not somehow drag her pride in the dust to tell 
him that Ruddy hadn’t left all that behind him. If he 
had . . . 

“ He said you were the one that mattered. He loved you, 
didn’t he?” 



317 


JUNE 

” I think . . . As much as he loved anyone. . . 

“ And he loves you, now. He said so.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ You’ve talked it over, haven’t you, before this, you 
two ? ” 

“ Once. . . . Only once, Geoff, truly.” 

Again that little quiver went over Geoffrey’s face. “ It’s 
the thing I’ve felt between us. You married me . . . 

and all the time you were in love with him.” 

“ Geoffrey . . .” 

“ You’ve never loved me, not for a moment. You’re not 
mine. . . . You could have been honest with me. I’ve 

asked you if there were anyone. You might have said.” 

“ It wasn’t exactly as you’re thinking.” They had reached 
the door. The narrow room wavered and blurred to her 
weary vision but there was a point she wanted to make 
Geoffrey understand, the point of all of this. “ I didn’t 
want love. I’ve fought loving Ruddy as those men fought 
the fire to-night, beating it back. And I didn’t want even 
to love you, Geoff. I wanted not to love you. I’ve been 
afraid of loving, of its pain and sharpness. I’ve never 
wanted to feel love again. . . 

“ Because you loved him so much.” 

“ In a way. Can’t you see ? Can’t you understand ? I’d 
let myself go once and I couldn’t again. I hadn’t the cour¬ 
age. Geoff, it was over and done with months before I 
married you, more than a year before. I met Ruddy for 
five minutes that afternoon before I called you up. . . .” 

She saw his eyes fasten on hers, full of comprehension. 
“ How does it affect us, now? ” 

He said quietly, “ I don’t know how. It just does.” 

“ I was trying to beat it back. . . .” 

“But,” Geoffrey said, “there it is. Love’s not a thing 
to be beaten back.” 

“ Can’t you imagine a love that hasn’t enough behind it 
. . . nothing behind it . . . that burns use¬ 

lessly . . 

He said, “ No, I can’t imagine that.” 


318 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

She could see that he could not bear to imagine it. She 
watched him standing there motionless, his remote eyes 
looking beyond her into the grayish outer dusk; and slowly 
the uselessness of speech overcame her. Her explanations 
were quite futile and every word in them another stab for 
him. Geoffrey saw the situation from his own point of 
view, from Ruddy’s, from that of a man who loves a 
woman, never from hers. He accepted at their surface 
value all that either of them had said and he believed that 
they loved each other. He believed that she was eating 
her heart out for Ruddy. It seemed unbelievable that she 
had come to inflicting on another person suffering such as 
she had known; but the unbelievable has a way of happen¬ 
ing. The worst of the whole matter was Geoffrey’s pain. 

V 

It was impossible to sleep. She had the will to keep her 
body quiet, to lie resolutely still with her head held to the 
pillow but her ears were strained to hear the lightest sound 
in Geoffrey’s room and her eyes were wide, as if their lids 
had been slit and fastened back in the oriental torture that 
breaks the brain with seeing. 

She went over and over that unexpected meeting at the 
foot of the lane until the remembrance was hardly to be 
borne. Did she love Ruddy? Was it true, as he had said, 
that they were marked, both of them, branded with that 
young passion that had been theirs? Did only one love, 
worthy or not, come to a person in a lifetime and, proving 
impossible, worst one for all time? It was true, what she 
had said to Geoffrey, that she was not the type to take love 
casually. If it were incomplete, nothing else really mat¬ 
tered. Suppose Geoffrey freed her. Would she drift back 
to Ruddy? Had she drifted so long that she could do 
nothing for herself? What would she do? She did not 
know. She only knew that she wanted to put an end to the 
wearisome turmoil of thinking. She was tired of resisting. 
Was there any ignominy like the ignominy of living, un¬ 
replenished, mechanical, dissatisfied with all she was . . . 


JUNE 319 

Through all her ragged nerves she wanted sleep. She 
remembered the easy depths of slumber into which she had 
been used to plunge all those years when she slept in her 
narrow room across the hall from Anne under St. Agatha’s 
eaves; but it had been months since she had known sleep 
like that and days since she had slept more than a very 
little. Her head ached much of the time and her body was 
listless with that wakefulness. She wanted peace, forget¬ 
fulness, the dreamless depths of slumber, darkness folding 
down upon her. . . . There would be a certain slight 

happiness . . . wouldn’t there ... in falling into 

that peace like a ripe apple falling from a tree? 

The powders Anne had sent her were lying in her glove 
box where she had put them on the day they came and she 
thought of taking one, but it seemed improbable that one 
alone could serve her need. It would take two, at least, if 
she were to sleep well, or three ... or ten. She felt 
an irresistible temptation to take a handful of them not 
counting numbers. . . . “ I should be very certain of 

sleeping,” she said aloud. “ I’d simply never wake up.” 

The sound of her own voice startled her and, after an 
instant, her words. She got up out of bed and gath¬ 
ering up the twenty folded papers, impulsively pushed them 
over the sill of her window. She was afraid even to take 
one. One was a beginning. . . . “ Afraid,” she mocked 

her dim reflection in the glass. “ Always afraid. . . .” 

But she lay quietly, watching as the dark lessened, the 
widening view of the valley and the flank of the farther 
hill, a long, narrow wheatfield running at the foot of the 
ridge and a flat field opposite, edged by a curve of willows 
that overhung the creek. 

When the sun had risen, she turned on her pillow and 
slipped into confused dreaming through which she heard 
Geoff’s step go down the stairs, and his closing, sometime 
later, of the outer door. It was past noon when she awak¬ 
ened. Even then the day stretched ahead, too long by many 
hours and she felt a tightening of the nerves at the prospect 
of the evening that, coming at a snail’s pace, would still 


320 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


bring Geoffrey home. They would talk. They couldn’t 
help talking. By bedtime she would be sleepless again. 

Suddenly she wanted Miriam. It was delightful to con¬ 
template the possibility of sleep in Miriam's airy high-ceil- 
inged rooms. Afterward, with her thoughts collected, it 
would be easier to talk to Geoffrey. She wrote him a line 
telling him that she would spend the night at Woodlawn; 
and went as if she had been driven. 


XIX 


MIRIAM 

I 

Miriam was lying in a wicker chaise longue in the sun- 
porch, wrapped in a Chinese coat of black and gold, a 
scarlet pillow behind her head. 

“ Babs-honey, you look half dead. You're white," she 
said. “ What is the matter ? " 

“ I've not been sleeping very well. I feel as if I'd been 
dragged through a knot-hole." 

“ Not . . . ?" 

It took Barbara an instant to understand the significance 
of Myrrh’s lifted eyebrow. She rejected the inquiry in¬ 
stantly. 

“ Oh, no, not that. Heavens . . . no." 

“ It could be supposed, couldn’t it? You’ve been married 
almost two years." 

Barbara did not answer. She thought that a child did 
present a solution to most of the problems of womankind. 
“ But hardly mine," she reminded herself. “ Complicate 
things a hundred times," and aloud she said, “ Could you 
put me up ? I’m wild for sleep. I can't manage it at home, 
but I thought that here with you . . ." 

“ I may be going up to town later on." She seemed 
curiously evasive, over-friendly yet not cordial. “ Paul 
isn’t here and I'm having dinner early. You can stay 
. . . if you don’t mind being alone." 

With the hot food, Barbara relaxed visibly. The black- 
bean soup was delicious and the salad crisp and cold. 
“ Enar's wordless devotion," Myrrh explained. “ Only the 
crispest of his lettuce. I think I probably mean more there 
than the ordinary mistress means to a servant. . . 


322 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Suddenly her voice throbbed with feeling. “ Something 
tremendous happened to me to-day, Babs. I want to tell 
you.” 

“ You rather drain emotions to the dregs, don’t you, 
Myrrh?” 

A swift secret smile crossed Mrs. Goddard’s lips but she 
did not go on. For a time, on the porch, their talk rippled 
over trivialities in which neither of them could sustain an 
interest. Even Miriam’s repose seemed dramatic . . . 

suspense in her desultory sentences, her silence. Dusk was 
coming on when she broke a long pause. “ Paul has left 
me,” she said abruptly. “ I sent him away this afternoon.” 

“ Sent him away?” 

“ I came to the end to-day. I happened in a trifle late 
last night . . . there’s no use going into the details 
. . . and it was the last straw. We rowed . . . hor¬ 

ribly. The upshot was that I sent him off. I’m alone.” 

“What about Nancy?” 

“ It’s the end, I tell you. Naturally, when he left he’d 
take his brat with him. Both of them . . . out of my 

house.” She laughed. “ The Goddard episode is over, Gott 
sie dank.” 

“ Myrrh . . . don’t. . . .” 

“ Oh, let me talk. Why shouldn’t I, to you ? Paul 
Goddard is nothing to me. I may have thought I loved him 
for a little, but really, in a big way, I mean, he never had 
me. He never possessed so much as my little finger.” 

Geoffrey would have sneered at that. “ Did you want 
him to possess you ? ” 

“ I could tell you something. . . .” Again that secret 

smile crossed her mouth and her eyes dropped languid- 
lidded. “ That would surprise you. If you’d never 
tell . . ” 

“ Don’t tell me,” Barbara said quickly. She knew too 
much already. She had the dread that Goddard would 
appeal to her again. “ Don’t tell me anything, Myrrh. 
Please.” 

" It’s wiser not,” Miriam said. “ And you’ll know soon 


MIRIAM 323 

enough. Babs-honey, think of being free. God send you 
the sensation. Paul was never my sort. Next time I’ll 
marry my sort ... one of the masters of the earth 
. . . the sort of man who can give a woman what she 

wants.” 

“Do you mean . . . jewels?” Barbara mocked 

softly. “ And pictures and rugs and cloisonne ? ” 

She was surprised at the narrowing of Miriam’s eyes. 
“Why not? Your real man goes after money. You can’t 
get away from the fact, my dear, that we live in a material 
world, a world of physical necessities. One must have 
food and clothes and shelter before one can begin to 
live at all. Why not be frank about it? I am. I admit I 
love beautiful things, and beautiful things are costly. I 
hate ugly, cheap clothing as I hate coarse food and shoddy 
music ... or chromos. Spiritually, I’m an aristocrat. 
Any woman is, whose sense of spiritual values has been 
trained and who is true to herself. That is the thing about 
me that Paul doesn’t understand and isn’t capable of un¬ 
derstanding. He’s forever harping on the fallacies . . . 

simplicity, frugality, hard labor . . . truisms a hundred 

years past; but there’s no use talking about Paul. I don’t 
know why I keep coming back to him.” 

“ Perhaps you’re finding a way out.” 

“ No. There isn’t any way out . . . with Paul. 

He’s failed at marriage as he’s failed in his work, spend¬ 
ing himself on the littlenesses. He fails certainly in all the 
nuances of living with a woman like me. /’m not a common 
woman to be satisfied with common things. I’m not a 
Puritan, all smug hypocrisies. I want big living, rich, beau¬ 
tiful living. I want the energy and leisure to enjoy the 
beauty in the world I’m going through. I want time for 
spiritual things . . . and you have to have a decent 

income if you’re to have that margin of energy and leisure. 
It doesn’t seem like such a lot to ask of a man. Other 
women have those things . . . women not half so 

spiritually alive as I. Did you ever see Dirck Gannet’s 
mother, Babs? . . . swathed in her moleskins? Why 


324: THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

should I go hungry all my life, starving the very heart of 
me? Listen, Babs.” She sat up, her hands clasped about 
her knee, her smooth voice deepening. “ The truth of the 
whole thing is that I want children. I want babies with 
all the mother-heart that’s in me. I want my babies . . . 

and I can’t have them. I simply have refused to have them 
if I cannot provide a decent environment for their bringing 
up . . . proper nurses . . . (and do you know 

what a nurse costs these days, Barbara?) proper schools 
when school-time comes, the right friends. Paul wouldn’t 
pay the tuition at the Montessori school over at Blair 
for Nance. He said he couldn’t afford it. That’s his 
idea of economizing, sending his first-born to a public- 
school kindergarten. If she’d been my own, I’d have fought 
the thing out. It comes down, simply, to this: I’ve married 
a man who isn’t capable of providing for the children I 
want to have. He’s robbed me of my birthright, Barbara 
. . . my babies. If he could show me ten thousand a 

year . . . Oh, what is the use of mulling it over? He 

can’t. He’s never earned over four in his life.” 

“ He’s just past thirty.” 

“ I can’t wait until he’s sixty on the chance that his abil¬ 
ity may increase.” 

“ But four thousand, Myrrh. So many people live on 
that. We do. On less than that.” 

“You do?” Myrrh’s inflection carried a hint of laugh¬ 
ter. “ I couldn’t. Life means too much to me. I care too 
terribly about its spiritual structure. . . .” 

A little silence fell. Barbara sat still, hot with resent¬ 
ment at Miriam’s amusement. She would keep silence, she 
said to herself, until Myrrh noticed her unresponsiveness 
and apologized; but Miriam did not notice. 

“ I’ve looked ahead,” she resumed complacently. “ You’ll 
admit I’m a practical sort, Babs. I’ve been thinking of 
escape for a long time. I’ve bought clothes for a year. 
. . . Imagine Paul’s emotions when the bills come in! 

. . . and I’ve checked out the quarter’s housekeeping 

money. Anyway, I can get money. I’ve a corking idea for 


MIRIAM 325 

a book and I may work on that . . . make a pot of 
money eventually; but now, after all this strain, I want to 
loaf a little. I’ve been through too much. I shall stay on 
here a month or two, quietly, and then, probably in the fall, 
late, I’ll go to Reno. . . .” 

“ Will Paul let you stay here ? ” 

“ Woodlawn is mine, ,, Miriam said crisply. “ Paul did 
have the decency to deed the place to me the day he bought 
it. He said himself that every man owes the woman he 
marries a home. It’s utterly mine.” 

“ And you put him out of it.” 

“ Quibbling Babs. Look at the thing straight. The big 
thing and the fine thing is that Pve the courage to take my 
life into my own hands and be free. . . .” 

“ It took,” Barbara went on evenly, “ just all he had, 
didn’t it, to buy this house for you ? ” 

“ Imagine a little place like this, taking all a man has. 
That shows him up, doesn’t it? That one thing shows up 
his calibre, exactly.” 

“If it were anyone but you,” Barbara said in the same 
clear voice, “ anyone, I mean, but the adorable girl I knew 
back in the tower-room . . . and I have to keep re¬ 

minding myself that you are that girl, really ... I 
should despise you from the bottom of my heart.” 

“ Why, Babs,” Miriam cried in genuine surprise. “ Why 
. . . Barbara Hale. And I care more for you than 

anyone.” 

There was no resentment discernible on Miriam’s aston¬ 
ished face and after a moment Barbara’s waned. They 
knew each other better than most women, in their brief 
devastating friendships, ever can. Miriam spoke again, 
thoughtfully, the pauses between her sentences inexplicably 
more emphatic than the things she said. 

“ That’s the point, of course. I am different so that you 
can’t despise me as you would the ordinary woman. 
You don’t think of me as ordinary. . . . The ordinary 

code doesn’t apply to any woman with the courage to face 
life. It takes courage. It’s a hard road. Don’t think I 


326 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

haven't considered that. I shall meet innumerable small 
souls who will never appreciate what I'm doing, never catch 
the psychological significance of freedom. My own people 
are like that. When a woman chooses to be free, she makes 
her own rules. The right thing is the thing that enriches 
one’s personality. If you have the wisdom to choose that 
instinctively, you realize that your own ideals are more im¬ 
portant than all the traditions we’ve been told so solemnly, 
all the precepts . . 

She was interrupted by a summons to the telephone. 
Barbara sat still, thoughtfully rubbing the spot on her cheek 
where Miriam had kissed her when she passed, trying to 
apply the things that Myrrh had said to herself . . . 

and Geoffrey and Ruddy. This, perhaps, was what she 
needed, a sign-post pointing the way. Her life was her own. 
She heard the indistinguishable murmur of Mrs. Goddard’s 
voice from the telephone booth under the stairs, a sound 
that fitted in with the country dusk and the quiet. Five 
minutes later, Miriam called sharply. She was going into 
town . . . she hadn’t quite the connection she wanted 

. . . but there was no time to explain. A conference. 

Barbara was to stay the night, just as they’d planned . . . 

go to bed early and sleep like a saint. 

She dressed hurriedly while Barbara brought her things 
from the closet and found her purse and she stood, hatted 
and veiled, in the lower hall, restlessly glancing at her watch 
and casting sharp sentences at Barbara who sat somewhat 
listlessly upon the stairs. It was already past nine. Barely 
time to catch the limited at Blair. Wynville was nearer and 
the train was later, too, but she couldn’t have all Wynville 
eyeing her this time of night. If she had been sure of 
having this conference she’d have gone up in the afternoon. 
She ought to have chanced it, anyway. Here was twenty 
minutes gone, waiting for the taxi. Damn a house two 
miles from any town. . . . 


II 

When she had gone, Barbara went up-stairs and undressed 


MIRIAM 


327 

slowly, a curious repulsion flickering along her nerves. She 
disliked lying down on the luxurious bed which was scented 
with the heavy perfume that hung about everything of 
Miriam's, and the wide room hung with mauve and gold. 
But she did not consider going back to the Little House. 
It meant a lonely walk along the road and she had no relish 
for the explanations she would have to make to Geoffrey. 

The wind had risen, carrying a rush of rain. She could 
hear the spatter against the windows, and now and then a 
quick gust of wind whistled in the chimney. She could 
hear the ticking of Miriam's desk-clock in the stillness, and 
through it the far-off rush and rumble of the train leaving 
Blair. What seemed a long time passed and she lay 
motionless thinking not at all. Eleven chimed from the 
clock in the hall, down-stairs. After that, the rain and the 
darkness obliterated thought and she drifted into dreaming. 
Her ideas were confusing, frittering out into nothingness. 
A pageant of many figures moved, shadow-like, before her 
. . . a little girl, playing at being gorgeous Cleopatra in 

a silk-curtained barge ... a girl slim and white like 
an unlighted candle ... a princess leaning from her 
turret while troubadours sang in the night . . . pier- 

rettes dancing . . . Paul Goddard’s face with its stiff 

dull hair and tired eyes. One was sorry for Paul God¬ 
dard. . . . 

She was wakened from deep sleeping by a curious sound, 
a prolonged buzzing that came from the wall beside her 
bed ... a short buzz, a long, two short. Startled, she 
sat up by no means believing her own ears. It sounded like 
a signal but it was impossible that it could be a signal . . . 
unless Miriam had missed her train. 

She turned on the light and peered at the desk-clock. It 
was half-past one and she waited tensely, conscious that she 
was alone in a strange house. She remembered suddenly 
that it was the bell at the back door which buzzed; the 
front door-bell rang. If it were anything but part of a 
dissolving dream, it was the back door. The buzzing began 
again . . . twice, with an impatient instant between, 


328 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


and Barbara slipped out of bed, catching up a negligee of 
Miriam’s, slipping her feet into mules. Her heart was 
thumping with nervousness but there was nothing else to do. 
It might be Norah, who had left with Nancy. Or Miriam’s 
father. Or even Paul. There might have been an acci¬ 
dent. . . . She switched on the light in the hall and 

went noiselessly down the stairs, her finger-tips brushing the 
wall. Through the dining-room window she peered doubt¬ 
fully out on the drive, making out the black bulk of a car, 
shadowed against the blackness. 

She fumbled at a second switch beside the pantry door. 
Beyond when she touched another the kitchen flared into 
brilliant light tripled by wide reflectors. Enar was sleeping 
over the garage. At the worst, she could scream. 

She heard the scrape of a boot on the floor of the porch 
and the soft clearing of a man’s throat. Resolutely, she 
forced herself to move across the room and thrust back the 
bolt. Then with a kind of reckless resignation, she flung 
the door wide. Ruddy was standing on the threshold. He 
held his soft hat under his arm and the light glinted across 
his hair. 

Ill 

They surveyed each other through a deepening silence. 
Ruddy’s face paled slowly, a few boyish freckles, in the 
brilliant light, standing out with startling distinctness across 
his nose. They struck Barbara with a pang because they 
seemed all that was left of the Ruddy she knew . . . 

Ruddy the Laughing Cavalier. On the rest of his face the 
skin looked haggard and white, puffed in little pouches un¬ 
der his eyes. 

For a moment he waited there, staring at her blankly, a 
forced smile fixed on his lips; but then she saw the muscles 
of his throat contract and knew that he was making ready 
excuses, lies . . . glib lies. And with a wide-flung 

gesture, she raised her arms high and thrust the door be¬ 
tween that face and her own gaze. She heard the crash 
of it, the clangor of the heavy bar, falling- 


MIRIAM 


329 


Presently, she was back in Miriam’s room, standing still 
by the bed, her hands over her face. “ You fool . . 

she said aloud, and after a long silence. “ You fool . . . 

you fool . . .” She thought that the lights might be¬ 

tray her wakefulness if Ruddy had the curiosity to stay and 
watch, and she turned them out, pushing a chair close to 
the window where she huddled, listening to the thin patter 
of the rain. She was cold with a chill that went through 
all her flesh, but her mind was intensely active. Heavy 
upon her was a sensation of loss. Something had gone out 
of existence. . . . 

Ruddy had gone. The sight of him in the doorway of 
Miriam Goddard’s kitchen had been infinitely more convinc¬ 
ing, somehow, than the suspicions centering about a Jane 
Treves or the sight of him lifting a tiny woman down the 
curb before the door of Balri’s. She was old enough, wise 
enough for conviction to possess her. There had been two 
Ruddys . . . the boy who understood her smallest act 

with a crystal clarity, whose kisses had been ecstasy, the 
boy who said, “ I want you . . . for my sweetheart and 

my wife. Babs, will you kiss me now ? ” Only that boy 
hadn’t existed. Out of her own warm youth she had cre¬ 
ated a figure having his body and his name and hung it 
with the purple and fine linen of her dreams. Their very 
love had been dreaming. . . . 

Still, he moved in the flesh. She forced herself to think 
of Ruddy as a reality, existing in the world, year after 
year, a heavy man with a crooked smile and philanderous 
eyes, but it seemed a grotesquerie. Dirck Gannet was fin¬ 
ished. He had departed from her life and was at peace 
with her memories. 

At the same moment, she thought of Miriam. A tear 
stole out beneath her closed lids and another and another. 
She dropped her head against the edge of the chair and hid 
her face in the angle of her arm, but her tears were not for 
Ruddy nor for herself. It was Miriam for whom she cried. 
It was Miriam she had lost. 

The rain stilled at dawn and the day came, a gusty day 


330 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

with the clouds and wind that storms leave behind. Bar¬ 
bara breakfasted alone in the sunny dining-room, eating 
slowly with a passive stoicism. She was bent on seeing 
Miriam before she left Woodlawn and she hoped, by daw¬ 
dling, to erase the moments that must elapse before she could 
go away; but the breakfast hour wore by and another and 
a third in which she could not occupy herself. The third 
hour she spent pacing the living-room from end to end, her 
whole mind fastened on the tedious business of waiting. It 
was nearly noon when Miriam opened the glass doors and 
coming in, shut them carefuly behind her. She looked 
curiously untidy. Her hat was pinned securely and her veil 
in place but her silk suit had a rumpled look as if she had 
worn it too long and the soft flesh of her face was sodden. 
Barbara was startled by her face. It was white and strained 
and piteously tremulous. Her expectant eyes met Barbara’s 
with a look almost of relief. 

“ So you waited, did you ? ” There was only the faintest 
trace of belligerence in the dulled voice. “ I’d have gone 
over to the Little House, anyway. We’ve a good deal to 
say to each other, I think.” 

“ Something, at least. I . . .” 

“ You needn’t begin. I know the whole thing. I’ve seen 
Dirck.” 

“ Where?” 

“ He was waiting at the station this morning in Chicago. 
From the message I left he understood he was to come out 
here. After we missed each other last night, he knew that 
was the logical place to look for me.” She made no attempt 
at concealment. She did not care what Barbara knew. “ I 
stayed over a train and we talked . . . there, in the 
waiting-room with people all around us. He was . . . 
ruthless, rather. He wouldn’t let me explain anything.” 

“ Was there,” Barbara asked in a strange, steady voice, 
“ anything you could explain to Ruddy?” 

Miriam stared at her drearily. “ I don’t mean about my¬ 
self. I mean about you and what you thought. I tried to 
tell him that it didn’t matter,” 


MIRIAM 


331 


“ It doesn’t matter.” 

“ That’s what I told him. I told him that you, of anyone, 
would grasp the significance of the thing. But he wouldn’t 
listen to me. He said there was something hard about you 
. . . something invincible and that in the end he’d 
broken himself against it. He said queer things. He 
said ...” 

“ Don’t tell me.” 

“ But I must, Babs. I want to. This affair’s over. 
Ruddy said . . . He said if he had learned anything in 

life it was how to get rid of a woman.” 

She stood beside the table, her glance shifting aimlessly 
across its orderly array of magazines, and stripped the 
gloves from her plump hands. Watching her, Barbara was 
aware of that as Miriam’s habitual gesture. She stripped 
her hands exactly as she bared her soul, with the same un¬ 
concern. She had seen her do it so many times. . . . 
And this was the last time. 

“ It’s quite over,” Miriam said. “ I might as well send 
for Paul to come back, I suppose. I’m going to tell you the 
whole thing. . . .” 

“ No,” Barbara cried sharply. “ Myrrh, there’s no use 
in your telling me.” 

Miriam’s face took on a blank amazement. “ But Paul’s 
none the wiser, Babs. So far as he’s concerned this is just 
another cycle of row and reconciliation. And I’ll tell Paul 
little enough, I promise you. Of course, in the beginning I 
thought I’d marry Dirck, after . . .” 

“ Oh, Miriam . . .” 

“ I couldn’t go on the way we were. It was too risky 
. . . those week-ends in town and his visits here. Peo¬ 

ple were bound to talk when it seeped out that Paul had 
left.” She drew a long, shivering breath and sat down, 
leaning her forehead on her clasped hands. “ Oh, it hasn’t 
worked out. Honestly, I meant to marry him, Barbara. I 
thought it was certain. Dirck’s the type to hold me . . . 

always has been. I meant to marry him just as soon as I 
was rid of Paul. He says he isn’t the marrying sort. He 


332 THE FLAME OP HAPPINESS 

was furiously angry because you knew he’d been here; and 
a man will say anything when he’s angry, but he rather 
went the limit. It was only a stupid mistake of mine—not 
meeting him. Even being Ruddy doesn’t excuse the things 
he said. You see . . her voice trailed down indis¬ 
tinctly. “ I must get Paul back as quickly as I can. It’s 
the only thing left to do.” 

Barbara looked at her. 

“ I have to know this,” she said slowly. “ I have to go 
all my life knowing this about you and Ruddy.” She sat 
staring, her eyes wide in her white face. She had to know 
more than this. She had to know that within the day after 
Ruddy had claimed her from Geoffrey . . . There 

weren’t, really, any words. 

“ I want to tell you everything from the beginning, Babs. 
Please. I want to. I want to confess to you. I want to 
tell you everything I’ve done.” She did. She had reached 
the stage of maudlin outpouring, trying to convince herself 
by a plethora of arguments that the facts which were before 
her could not possibly be true. For all the pain in her heart, 
Barbara felt cold, sick to the soul of confidence. 

“ But / don’t want to listen. I know more about you now 
than any human being decently can know about any other. 
I hate it. I’m . . . through.” 

At first she did not understand. She came back a little 
way from her contemplations and sat still, with a dazed look, 
and Barbara had the confused feeling that she was hammer¬ 
ing something soft and squashy with her fists. It made her 
sick, but she was sick, too, of phrases. Gradually, she saw 
that the look on Miriam’s face was changing to the one she 
had seen only once or twice in all their long intercourse 
. . . a guarded dislike, with the eyes narrowing and the 

lips drawn back ever so little above her teeth. 

‘‘You’re through. Are you indeed? Why? Because I 
made a dash for freedom and failed?” 

“ No. It’s hard to explain. But I can’t go on. I . . . 

can’t.” Nevertheless she tried to explain. “ I’ve loved you 
and I’ve let you take me in . . . literally, I mean, my 


MIRIAM 


333 


spirit into yours. I’ve let the charm and brilliance of you 
weigh in the balance. . . 

“ But because, in the last analysis, you find me different, 
you’re judging me.” 

“I don’t think we’re so very different,” Barbara said. 
“ I’ve been selfish and unprincipled, too.” 

“ Selfish. Unprincipled .” 

“ I mean that literally, too. I mean not principled. We’ve 
rather discarded them, haven’t we ? ” Principles were too 
eternal, too unvarying, too harsh. They’d revolted . . . 

only their revolt wasn’t like that of Anne’s decade with the 
idea of service in it. “ We’ve thought of ourselves as 
above principles. Oh, we have liked to think of ourselves 
as priceless personalities, Myrrh. We’ve said it over and 
over. We aggrandize self for the sake of self. Self-asser¬ 
tion, self-expression, self-seeking . . . they’re all in our 

code, aren’t they? And all the books we’ve read and the 
things we learned in college emphasized it. Nothing 
taught us not to be for self. Even the war passed us by. 
We caught some of the excitement, the boys in uniform 
and the big dances and the sentimentality. You can say 
we were too young to understand the rest, but if we’d tried 
we could have understood. We ought to have carried the 
torch. . . .” 

“ You say ‘ selfish/ ” Miriam interrupted. “ I’ve loaned 
you money more than once, Barbara Fallows.” 

“ But you don’t care especially about money. 
You . . .” 

“ That’s rather catty, isn’t it ? I’ve been a mighty good 
friend to you, if anyone asked.” 

They were simply getting nowhere. “ I know. Even in 
this you’ve not wronged me. It isn’t personal. In a way, 
you’ve done me the greatest service of our lives. . . . 
And I’m not really unfriendly to you, Myrrh. . . .” 

“ We’ve rowed a lot. But it’s been a long time since the 
last, hasn’t it? ” Miriam said thoughtfully. “ Let’s get back 
to earth. I like you, Babs. You do understand my moods 
better than anyone. Even poor old Paul sensed that when 


334 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


he went to you. Suppose I forgive the silly things you’ve 
said and we’ll go on as we were. Crabby Babsie. . . 

“ I . . . can't,” Barbara said. 

“ I won’t pretend that I can understand what you mean.” 

“ You are pretending that you cannot understand it. I 
waited here this morning to make it quite clear. There’s 
no use going until I have.” But she got up and went to 
the door, pinning on her hat. “ Look here, Myrrh . . . 

you’d hate having people know this, wouldn’t you? You’d 
hate a scandal . . . wouldn’t you? ... as much 

as any woman.” Freedom wasn’t an essential. It wasn’t, 
even, worth a sacrifice. But she did not say that. She 
said, “ You know perfectly what people would think if it 
came out that a man not her husband lavished gifts on a 
woman, pictures and rugs for her house, clothes and 
trinkets her husband couldn’t buy for her. You know what 
they’d think if she visited his rooms or entertained him at 
her house, late at night. You’ve been to problem plays 
enough for that” 

Miriam smoothed one eyebrow with a pointed finger-tip. 
She looked slightly puzzled. 

“ You aren’t thinking ... ? Is some smudgy idea 

maundering through your mind that I’ve been unfaithful to 
my husband ? ” 

It seemed a very long while before Barbara spoke. 

“ No,” she said at length. “ I think quite probably you 
never have. You are very clever . . . and you love 
your body.” 

But that required explaining to herself. She thought 
swiftly. “ It doesn’t matter. If she’d really loved Ruddy 
. . . really loved him so that she’d been swept a little out 

of herself, and gone to him openly, I’d have respected her 
. . . a little. And I could have been sorry for her be¬ 

cause he wasn’t worth it. But I’m not sorry for her. . . . 
She’s taken from Ruddy as she took from Paul for her 
body’s sake, delicate foods and soft garments. She’s wanted 
the luxuries and the pleasures he gave her, and his lovemak¬ 
ing. A tumult of sensuous feeling. It was an emotional jag 


MIRIAM 


335 

. . . like Mason out at Banff and Michael Kent and 
those cyclical rows and reconciliations with Paul. Jags. I 
despise her. I can’t go on. . . .” 

“ There’s nothing in me to go on with,” she said aloud to 
Miriam. 

Miriam’s eyes were furious. “ You’d better go,” she said. 
“ You damned, self-righteous Puritan.” 

The door closed behind her and she turned away down 
the road with a faint, wakening exultation. Sunlight, pour¬ 
ing over the fields and the river gave them a desperate 
beauty that caught her by the throat. Against the green of 
a white-oak, fresh from the drench of rain, flashed a scarlet 
tanager, an imponderable fleck of color. Somewhere from 
a tree-top a bird cried and the wind rushing past her 
seemed to swing her with it. . . . In thought she was 

already with Geoffrey, her heat beating with a grave glad¬ 
ness. 


XX 


DOROTHEA 

The door of the Little House was locked. Barbara fum¬ 
bled over the lintel, found the key and let herself in. It was 
almost two o’clock and she went up to her own room, put¬ 
ting away her hat and changing into a cool dress. Her 
restlessness turned into a fury of housewifery. She swept 
and cleaned with a swiftness that matched her thoughts. 
Already the afternoon was passing and it was their night 
to dine at Maple Hill. She hung fresh curtains at the up¬ 
stairs windows. She scrubbed her kitchen floor and left it 
speckless, the faucets glittering. She polished the square- 
paned windows until they sparkled in the sunlight; and all 
the while the quaint charm of her Little House grew upon 
her until it seemed a part of her own tumultuous thought 
. . . as if Geoff were there, his presence vivid in the 

low rooms. The patience and hunger and beauty of his 
love possessed them. 

Afterward, she dressed most carefully, taking a long 
time. She had, all at once, the sense of her body as a 
sacred trust, the outer shell of the woman her husband 
loved and she took an incorrigible pleasure in making her¬ 
self lovely for his eyes. Never again, she knew, would she 
feel that she looked quite lovely enough. It seemed im¬ 
possible that she had dreaded the risk of loving Geoffrey. 
She was startled by her need for him; and there rushed 
through her a warm and wonderful sense of love . . . 

a love that knew in secret its own approaching triumph. 

By five o’clock, she was ready. For the first time since 
she had been included in the homely custom of Dorothea’s 
Saturday dinners, Barbara thought of it with anticipation. 
Five minutes alone with Geoffrey and the meal would be a 


DOROTHEA 337 

feasting. She got up resolutely' and went out across the 
wide yard to the farmhouse. It held the stillness of the 
drowsy midsummer afternoon. There was no one in the 
living-room nor in the small library at the end of the hall. 
Barbara went noiselessly up the stairs to the study where 
she and Mark and Geoffrey had worked together in the 
winter, but that, too, was empty with an unused orderly 
look. As she came down again, she saw, from the lower 
step, Mark and his mother in the tiny glassed-in alcove 
where Dorothea sewed and drank her tea. 

They were standing a few paces apart, too intent on 
themselves to heed her. Dorothea’s small white head was 
lifted and a hard color flushed her thin cheeks, and Mark’s 
face had a tight-lipped look. Barbara waited at the newel- 
post, peering through the glass panel of the open door. 
Their movements had a weird precision and their dry voices 
were faint, yet uncannily distinct in the stillness. Dorothea 
was speaking. 

“ I cannot trust you.” 

“ Trust me.” 

“ Not now. You cannot see her now. You care too much 
about her. You care about the smallest things, a look, a 
half-hour’s talk. You can’t deny it.” 

“ I shall not try,” Mark said. 

“ I’ve known it from the first.” 

“ Hardly from the first, I think, Mother.” 

“ Since that summer,” Dorothea said dryly, “ when you 
brought home her picture and kept it under your neckties 
in the drawer. Did you think I wouldn’t know when I was 
♦with you every day? And when Geoff married her and 
brought her home, did you think I didn’t know ? Her play¬ 
ing that first night and the look of you, listening while she 
played. How was it possible for me not to know ? ” 

There was silence. Mark moved slightly and Dorothea 
looked at him out of eyes as bleak as bits of granite. “ Did 
she . . . refuse you ? ” 

He shook his head. “ I never asked her. She was young 
, . . and there was always someone else, from the first. 


338 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

Geoffrey, perhaps. Though Pm not sure. But it made her 
quite oblivious of me. I thought the time might come when 
things would change and I waited. Then she married Geoff. 
She doesn’t know about it, herself.” 

“ Perhaps not. It doesn’t matter. It’s you I’m thinking 
of. You allow yourself to love your brother’s wife and 
he . . 

“ Allow myself?” 

“Is the phrase unpalatable? You could have conquered 
it, Mark. You’re different stuff from Geoffrey. The 
thinker, the student in you is stronger; your work takes 
hold on you. Love doesn’t mean to you what it means to 
him, else you would not have waited, not speaking. Geof¬ 
frey didn’t wait. You aren’t listening to me.” 

'‘Yes. I’m listening.” 

“ Why did you let Geoff go ? Like that, without a word 
to me? You talk about ‘arrangements,’ but what arrange¬ 
ments? You are to tamper with your brother’s marriage? 
You are to make all this easy for his wife? ” 

“ It is Geoff’s plan. I could hardly refuse.” 

“ But you make it very easy for him, don’t you ? I keep 
asking myself why you should make it easy. I keep asking 
myself . . . against my will ... if there is 

treachery in a son of mine.” 

“ That,” Mark said in a hard voice, “ is ludicrous.” 

“ Not to me,” said Dorothea. “ All my life I’ve tried to 
hold you to self-discipline . . . I’ve tried to harden 

your fiber so that you could meet whatever came . . . 

and at the first crisis one of my sons deserts his wife and the 
other stays behind to make ‘ arrangements.’ It isn’t lu¬ 
dicrous to me.” 

The color came up unexpectedly in Mark’s face. 

“ Because you don’t understand, Moth’,” he said gently. 
“ It’s a situation none of us can quite understand. Geoff 
didn’t tell me a great deal; he didn’t tell me even what the 
‘ crisis ’ was when he came to me. He’d apparently thought 
the thing through to a finish and he asked me to do certain 
specific things. There’s more than self-discipline in it. 


DOROTHEA 339 

He s doing what he thinks is right. He went away because 
he loved her. . . 

“Then you go away,” Dorothea answered. “And for 
the same reason. I can see her. I can tell her everything 
that you can.” 

“ Go away . . .” Mark repeated stupidly. 

“ Do you think this is easy for me ? I mean it, Mark. 
You stay until this thing has worked out without you. 
Barbara is Geoffrey’s wife. What lies between them is not 
for your hands to touch.” 

Mark stood rigidly still, his muscles as tense as if they 
were holding in a hard struggle and as if the holding took 
all his strength. Barbara could see his figure, dark against 
the window and, hardly realizing that he was unconscious 
of her, she waited, expecting him to come toward her or 
speak her name, but no sound came from him. He picked 
up his hat from the sewing table where he had thrown it 
and with a half-smile on his face, he went away. 

His shadow fell across the floor at the foot of the stair¬ 
way. He hesitated a moment in the square porch, leaning 
one shoulder against the tall, rounded pillar; and then be¬ 
gan slowly to descend the stone steps leading to the road. 
She would have liked to call him back and ask him what 
it was all about but she dared not . . . not with that 

implacable little figure watching beside the window of the 
room beyond . . . and she slipped after him through 

the door. But even then she did not call. An angle of 
the steps hid him for a moment, the shoulder of the knoll 
hid him as he reached the road and a little further on, the 
hollow where the road dipped to cross the creek. Beyond 
the footbridge, he emerged again, his figure dark and small 
against the white road. For a long time she could see 
him walking very fast . . . limping. 

When she turned, she saw that Dorothea was behind her 
in the doorway. She motioned to her with an imperious 
movement of her head and went back into the room from 
which she had just dismissed her elder son. She met 
Barbara’s gaze with a curiously impersonal glance, with 


340 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

none of the anger she had showed to Mark. (“That is 
because she doesn’t care about me,” Barbara thought,. “ and 
she does care so terribly for them.”) She stood on the 
threshold, swept of all emotion, waiting for Madam Hale 
to speak. Dorothea’s slight figure trembled suddenly; and 
as if she discovered and despised that physical tremor, she 
drew forward her chair and sat down with great dignity 
and deliberation. 

“ Geoffrey has deserted you,” she said. 

Her frozen quiet stilled the protesting sound that forced 
itself from Barbara’s throat. After a pause she went on. 

“ He left a letter for you in Mark’s care. I have it here.” 

She opened the drawer of her sewing table and handed 
it to Barbara. Then she turned away, keeping her face to¬ 
ward the river, as Barbara tore it open. 

“ My very dearest,” Geoffrey had written. “ Because you 
are my very dearest, I’m clearing out. The thing’s too 
strong for me. I can’t stand it. I can’t live with you as 
we’ve lived these two years. I know that you aren’t happy 
in the Little House with me and never have been. I’ve 
the feeling that I’ve caged you and I want you free. It’s 
you, your happiness I care about. 

“ This is the simplest way. It will take time but it leaves 
you free, after all, to make what you want to of your life. 
I shall see Mark and tell him what arrangements I have 
and when you have read this, he will explain what they are. 
All you have to do is lock the Little House and go away. 

“ And do not blame yourself. You aren’t to blame be¬ 
cause you didn’t love me. You tried. Looking back, I love 
the pluck of you. . . . 

“ But then, I love your hair and your eyes and your 
voice and the touch of your hand. . . .” 

Long before she came to the end she could not see the 
words, for the mist in her eyes. If there had been one 
word of blame, one mention of Ruddy, she would not have 
cried over it, she told herself fiercely, or kissed it. She 


DOROTHEA 341 

kissed it twice, because after all it was a love-letter, her 
first love-letter, a reality. Then she folded it and held the 
envelope between her palms, trying to think. She felt that 
she should consider the situation calmly, but her thoughts 
were confused by the longing in her heart for Geoffrey. 
It seemed impossible that he should have gone, like this, 
at the very moment when she needed him most . . . 
that she was not to see him again. Her face quivered sud¬ 
denly. If he had waited, she could have made up the hurt 
he had endured in a thousand ways. . . . 

“ I had hurt him,” she said to Dorothea. “ I hadn’t 
meant to hurt him. But I did.” 

“ Not for the first time,” Dorothea answered with a dry, 
slightly malicious suavity. “ Not by any means for the 
first time. Did he say at all where he was going? ” 

“ No.” 

“Then we cannot find him.” 

That struck her like a blow; and for the first time the 
thought came to her that Geoffrey meant his action to be 
irrevocable. It would have been such an easy thing to 
follow him. . . . “ Mark must know,” she said. 

“ Mark would have told you if you hadn’t sent him away.” 

“ No. Mark told me all he knew. Geoffrey saw him 
very late last night, by appointment in the city. He told 
him he was going away but he did not tell him where. Or 
why. He was careful to tell him nothing. All he said was 
that he had seen someone . . . some third person whose 

name, even, Mark does not know and that that person is to 
receive a monthly check for you and deposit it in a Chicago 
bank. The bank will tell us nothing. We might ask every 
acquaintance we have and still not find the person whom 
Geoffrey trusted. And we could not do that.” 

“ People would talk, you mean.” 

“ It would be intolerable,” Dorothea said. “ We’ve kept 
ourselves above the muck of farmyard gossip all our lives.” 

“But we can do something, can’t we, before they start 
talking ? ” 

“ I don’t know what it would be. Geoffrey isn’t one of 


342 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

those who take . . . hurts, lying down. He came here 

and sat with me for an hour yesterday afternoon while you 
were at Woodlawn, but he did not tell me that he was going 
away. I don’t know what has happened . . . but I do 

know that he has worked for three years to bring the bella¬ 
donna to the harvest it promises this year and I know that 
it would be a serious thing that would take him from that.” 

A little silence held them. Dorothea shifted in her chair 
and looked out to the river and the hills. 

“ There is no use beating about the bush,” she said. 
“ This is . . . calamity for me. I’ve given thirty-five 

years of my life to making men out of my babies, useful, 
upright men. And I have to stand aside and watch a chit 
of a girl undo my work and make them soft and hurt them 
. . . hurt their lives and their hearts. . . .” 

“ You misjudge them.” She could pity this little austere 
woman even with that beating terror in her own heart. 
“ It’s you. You’re trying to hold them to doing things your 
way, and after all, they’re grown men and they’ll do their 
own marketing. It’s rather like trying to set down each foot 
of theirs, step after step, when you’ve spent a lifetime teach¬ 
ing them to stride alone.” 

“ Right is right,” said Dorothea. 

“ You don’t understand.” 

" Do you?” 

“ I think so. If it were true that loving me has made 
Geoff weak, it would be my fault, anyway. If he’s gone 
away from me for good, that’s my fault, too, not his. Oh, 
yes ... I know him, better than you. Better than 
you, Mother Hale. Geoff isn’t soft-fibered. He did a beau¬ 
tiful thing because he . . .” 

“Wife-desertion is not beautiful,” Dorothea said flatly. 
“ It is not beautiful to run away from responsibility. And 
my son has done both of these things. He has thrown away 
the success of his crop . . . and he has deserted you.” 

Deserted. The sound of the word rang in her ears, strip¬ 
ping her of all her pride, even that tender, new pride of 
hers in Geoffrey’s love. She had nothing at all of which 


DOROTHEA 343 

to be proud. “ This has happened to other women/’ she 
thought dully. “ Now it’s happened to me.” And she 
stood a few moments in the doorway, not speaking, trying 
to evolve some plan for the future. 

Dorothea said slowly, “ I ask you, if you have any 
thought for Geoffrey, not to go . . . prattling about 
this to your friend.” 

“ To Miriam, you mean?” 

“ Yes.” 

Barbara laughed. 

“ I’m hardly likely to . . . prattle to Miriam. I’m 
trying to think what I am going to do. But I can’t . . . 
think.” 

“ Time enough. I wish . . there was a break in her 
voice. She steadied it. “ I hope you will deliberate a long 
time before you take any step that . . . that you will 

regret or Geoffrey.” 

“ I won’t do anything at all, until I’ve told you and Fa¬ 
ther Hale,” Barbara said impulsively. 

Dorothea, upright in her high-backed chair, maintained 
a detached silence. After a moment, Barbara opened the 
door and went out. 

She took the road that Mark had taken across the creek 
toward Wynville. She had a rather confused feeling that 
either she should have been carrying a light heart that softly 
sunny afternoon with the scent of roses everywhere in the 
air; or that the heavens should open and pour forth their 
rain. In Wynville the streets were alive with the Saturday 
bustle. Farmers’ cars were drawn up around the Square 
and groups stood visiting along the curbs and in the door¬ 
ways of the stores. The school playground was full of 
children, a baseball game in full tilt at the further end. 
She stopped at a corner and a car swerved past her, filled 
with the people she knew . . . Geoff’s crowd . . . the 
dancing-club crowd. Someone waved and called to her, but 
she shook her head blindly. She had her own thoughts to 
thresh out. What a confused mess it was . . . good 

intentions and selfishness, torturing stupidity, misunder- 


344 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


standing where a glimpse of reality would have brought 
them happiness. . . . 

She turned in at the station restaurant . . . that eat¬ 
ing place that Myrrh had so despised . . . and ordered 

something from a card written in purple ink. Afterward, 
she walked aimlessly across the river and down the east 
road ... a quieter road than the county highway. A 
lengthened sunset was burning, primrose gold above the 
hills. She moved in a strange quiet, dully aware somewhere 
within her that she was enduring the bitterest hour of all 
her life. Now and then words that Dorothea Hale had 
spoken pricked through the fabric of her thought. They 
seemed such impossible words . . . “ deserted ” . . . 
“ calamity ” . . . “ run away from responsibility.” 

Geoffrey loved her and she loved him. That in itself 
ought to be enough to make things right. She was his wife, 
possessed by him in every fibre, wanting to be possessed. 
But she was a deserted wife, facing an empty future. She 
could not foresee clearly anything that she could do. All 
the life she had known, all the factors of that life had 
been broken and swept away as by a devastating flood. 
Ruddy was gone and the Barbara Fallows who had loved 
him was gone utterly. Miriam was gone. Mark was gone 
and Geoffrey with his hungering tenderness. Even Doro¬ 
thea, in whose austerity there was a certain security, had 
withdrawn to an immense frozen distance. 

It was possible, of course, to go back to St. Agatha’s 
and Anne. Anne had a rock-like strength in time of trou¬ 
ble. She had always . . . hadn’t she? . . . run 

back to that haven at St. Agatha’s when things grew diffi¬ 
cult. She could depart airily, shaking its dust from her 
feet, when the present was bright and the future alluring, 
but let hurt or trouble come, how quickly and with what 
eagerness she had sought its sanctuary. Not this time. 
Geoffrey had left her free, because, he said, he loved 
her, and was she to use her freedom to rush complain- 
ingly to Anne? Not very sporting, that. Like letters of 
fire across her thought flashed Anne’s single reproach. 


DOROTHEA 345 

“ You owed it to me to make the best of yourself.” No. 
Count that Anne, too, had gone. She was alone. 

Well, then . . . She set herself to think it through, 

to put the thing squarely before her and look at it with her 
mind, not her emotions. So she went back to the begin¬ 
ning. The beginning, for Barbara Hale, had been her mar¬ 
riage, her coming into a shared life. It was a foolish mar¬ 
riage, burdened with old mistakes that might have been 
decently interred, a childish, unthinking marriage. But 
there it was. She hadn’t carried her share. She hadn’t 
wanted, really, the effort of sharing life with anyone. She 
had wanted a different existence, ease, pleasure, joy, the 
ideal set up by the raw paganism of those first years 
after the war. There had been minor phases of the feeling, 
of course: the revolt against the austere simplicities of 
Maple Hill, against the drudgery and labor of the Little 
House. Geoffrey had never understood that Barbara found 
no part of the savor of life in drudgery and work. He did. 
He wanted them ... he accepted them. And why 
not? What happiness had soft living brought Miriam? 
What had Miriam taken out of life so far but discon¬ 
tent? 

Only she wasn’t thinking things out for Miriam. She 
was thinking about herself . . . Barbara Hale. What 

was it that, in the end, would count for success with Barbara 
Hale? Happiness. But you couldn’t make happiness the 
end of life. That was like following a flickering will-o’- 
the-wisp into a bog. The time came when you stuck. It 
was what Anne had meant, long ago. It was flame to warm 
you. It was a lighted fire throwing its gleam across the 
day ... an inextinguishable fire that you built up 
again and again, taking what kindling came to your hand. 
But that was all it was. It didn’t count. It was what you 
did with yourself, what was made of the potentialities which 
were yours in the beginning that counted. Character. But 
one couldn’t, when everything was said and done, step out 
and buy character, ready-made. It had to be hammered 
out . . . “ the divine image in the marble ” hard to get 


346 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

at. It took a long time to find oneself, to learn what one 
wanted and if it were worth wanting. . . . 

If you were going to do that, you had to have something 
to live by more permanent than joy. Something indestruc¬ 
tible. One could break away from codes, from tradition, 
but there ought to be something in oneself from which one 
could not break away, stronger than any emotion . . . 

like a rock in the ebb and flow of the tide of desire. . . . 

Anne had it in the guise of a simple integrity. The Hales 
had it. It was the quality Geoffrey meant when he said, 
“ sporting.” 

Sporting. As Dorothea said it was the word of the 
younger generation, almost its only admitted virtue. Their 
generation had been taught freedom by the preceding gene¬ 
ration, smarting under the tyrannies of its own youth. (’94 
had known that revolt.) They had learned to deride old 
ways and try new ones, to test platitudes, to jeer at con¬ 
vention and tradition. But they were “ sporting.” The 
word held all that was in Anne’s phrase, “ This, too, will 
pass ” and something more, some simple fortitude. It sig¬ 
nified a willingness to take what came unflinching. 

At the turn of the road, she came, unexpectedly, on the 
lane leading to Jan Dubinski’s farm where she had watched 
the fire with Geoff; and she stopped, looking toward the 
upland where the blaze had been. There were heaps of 
charred, blackened timbers and a great hole in the ground, 
but already work had begun. A scraper was turned over 
upon a heap of newly excavated earth and a pile of lumber 
loomed white above it. The light was fading and blue 
shadows were settling under the trees. Close to the fence 
the solitary figure of a woman bent over her stubby hoe, 
working the top-soil swiftly up about a potato hill. She 
straightened, easing her back as Barbara halted by the fence, 
and looked at her out of bright startled eyes set in a peasant’s 
face. Her teeth glistened and she made a sweeping gesture, 
indicating on the one hand the work she had done and on 
the other all that was left to do. Then she bent again, 
chopping her hoe into the ground, working fast in the gath- 


DOROTHEA 347 

ering twilight. The potatoes stretching away in even rows 
looked like Geoff’s belladonna. 

Barbara threw back her head with a choked sound, laugh¬ 
ter mingled with sudden sobbing. The Hungarian woman 
looked up in surprise, offering wordlessly to come to her 
if the lady needed help, but Barbara shook her head. She 
did not need help. She pressed her hand to her wet cheek 
and walked swiftly down the slope to the bridge, something 
sore in her heart turning to peace as if a soothing hand had 
been laid upon it. Coming through her pain she felt slowly, 
an invincible self-reliance. . . . 

The sky was still lucent with amethyst and purple clouds 
in the west, but a gray darkness was already filling the Little 
House. Its orderliness fell on Barbara like a benediction. 
She knew all at once that she was weary of body and serene 
of soul, ready for rest. She undressed quickly, not light¬ 
ing her candles. Her head had hardly touched her pillow 
when she fell asleep. 


XXI 


THE LITTLE HOUSE 

I 

Through July and August, Barbara worked in the fields. 
One of the men from the farm was spared to take over the 
heavier cultivation and Barbara found high-school boys in 
Wynville who could be trusted to strip the leaves and fill 
the drying trays; but from the first morning when she went 
to consult with Cyrus Hale and tell him her plans, she had 
faced to the full the responsibility of working Geoffrey’s 
crop. She did not see him as Dorothea, in her distress, 
had pictured him, a deserter shirking his trust. She saw 
him chivalrous and boyish, sacrificing his treasure for her 
happiness. . . . 

She knew very little, really, of the reasons for the things 
she did. She went daily to Hale, asking advice on her 
simplest undertaking and she pored over Mark’s printed 
pamphlet and Geoffrey’s scattered written notes, moving 
cautiously forward, directing each step in each day’s work 
with an intent care. She liked doing it, surprisingly. It 
was Mark’s theory, the plans they had developed through 
the winter, working out under her hands. She tested his 
conclusions and Geoffrey’s, and she made new observations 
of her own, keeping a tiny note-book in the pocket of her 
khaki shirt. There were innumerable things to be 
read. . . . 

She was early astir, breakfasting absorbedly over a book 
with the thought of her day’s work on her mind; and she 
worked as absorbedly under the burning August sun with 
the heat waves swinging above the spicy plants, dust from 
the field in her face and sweat washing little paths through 
its grime. 


THE LITTLE HOUSE 349 

She found a curious pleasure in that labor. Out of all 
the experiences she had known, these hours of drudgery, 
each adding its share to some slow structure of progress, 
were almost the first to hold an unsullied pleasure. She 
came into a passion for living, learning a delight in her own 
life that sustained her, as if, at last, she moved forward, 
in step with that resistless advance of the earth toward 
harvest. At the end of the day she felt a clean, outdoor 
weariness and she could sleep at night . . . deep 
dreamless sleep. 

If there were gossip . . . and Dorothea dreaded that 
. . . the Hales did not hear it. Barbara explained 

Geoffrey’s absence as necessary and her work, her stay at 
Maple Hill gave substance to her story. Even to Anne, she 
said, offhandedly, “ Geoff’s had to go away for a bit. I’m 
going to stay till the crop’s in.” 

“And after that?” 

“ I don’t know. It’s just that I don’t want him to lose 
his crop.” 

She realized as unconcernedly as any woman can that she 
was vivid with returned strength, coming into a new height 
of beauty, her skin like satin and her mouth scarlet in her 
rose-flushed face. “If only Geoff could see me . . .” she 
thought, and she had days hard with longing, when some 
little memory of Geoffrey coming to her sharply would 
tinge the whole of her thought with pain. There were days, 
too, when the feeling that she was still wandering in an 
endless maze returned to torture her, and every day she 
was expectant that she would fail in the task she set herself 
and ruin all her careful work and Geoffrey’s. But she did 
not fail. The first crop marketed at the figure for which 
Geoffrey had contracted as responding to the highest tests. 

The return amazed her. She had not thought that it 
could be so much. She took the check into Chicago to the 
bank where, every month, a sum had been left to her name 
and opened an account for Geoffrey Hale. For herself, she 
reserved the wages on which she had agreed with Cyrus; 
and out of them she wrote a second check. It was a check 


350 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

for two hundred and fifty dollars with computed interest 
. . . enclosed it in an envelope addresed to Geoffrey, en¬ 

closed that in another envelope and took it to the vice- 
president of the bank. 

“ I suppose you know the name of the person who banks 
money here for Barbara Hale ? ” 

He bowed, said nothing, waited. It was quite evident he 
did not mean to tell her. 

“ It isn’t necessary, of course, that I should know,” Bar¬ 
bara admitted thoughtfully. “ Only . . . after I’ve 

gone will you address this letter properly and see that it is 
mailed? It is important.” 

Then she went back to the Little House without seeing 
Anne. If she had hoped for knowledge, she would not ask 
it. She would do nothing that interfered with Geoffrey’s 
plan, nothing that would hurt the spirit in which he had 
given her release. It was her only visit to the city through 
that summer. There was a second crop already coming on, 
roots to be dug and dried. . . . 

September passed. October. 

II 

The Hales were very kind to her. She was at the farm¬ 
house oftener than she had ever been when her days passed 
idly. Dorothea insisted that she make no effort of her own 
beyond her rather casual breakfasting. “ You work hard,” 
she said. “ And we’d like a young face at the table, Father 
and I.” It was all rather pitiful to Barbara. They were 
grateful to her for staying on, quietly doing Geoffrey’s work, 
shielding his absence with her silence. They were trying 
to ease for her the blow they felt that Geoffrey had dealt 
her. Dorothea did not talk of him or Mark. If in her 
household there were not paltry desires or shabby discon¬ 
tent, neither was there any easy tolerance. Austerity was 
there, like a household guest in her bare, scanty, sunny 
rooms. Her sons had fallen below her standard and she 
held back from talking of them. Barbara could not make 
her understand. After a little she gave up trying. 


THE LITTLE HOUSE 351 

“ Things sometimes come right with just waiting,” Cyrus 
Hale told her. “I don’t know what possessed Geoff, 
Barbara.” 

“ Geoff’s his mother’s son,” Barbara said. “ Stern, gentle 
stuff, shamelessly honest.” He had come insistently near 
as the weeks lengthened. She knew him through and 
through, a deep imprint of his soul on hers. 

“ You’ve a staunch friend in his mother, Barbara.” 

“ Do you know,” Barbara said, “ that surprises me.” 

“You don’t know Dorothea, yet, not half. That’s not 
strange. Nobody can know a woman like the man who’s 
lived with her forty years . . . working together. I’ve 
come to know her like I know my own heart. . . 

Would Geoffrey ever say that about her? 

Anne came out irregularly, driving her Ford. Anne was 
growing unmistakably older. There was a gray streak in the 
fine dark hair above her forehead and a network of tiny 
wrinkles were beginning to show about her gray eyes. Anne 
was fifty. But she seemed nearer Barbara than she had 
since the days of the south dormer and the paper dolls. 
The hard time when Anne seemed of an alien race, harsh, 
uncomprehending, was gone. She had come back as from 
a far country to companionship. To Anne, she opened all 
her heart. The tumult was stilled. The experiences on 
which she had pondered in secret were finished. She could 
stand aside and talk of them, telling Anne everything . . . 
about Ruddy, about Geoff and Miriam. 

“ I think about Myrrh. Perhaps I did a dreadful thing, 
cutting away like that, but I couldn’t go on. I couldn't. 
It was like Ruddy. I had come to the end. I wish I’d had 
the sense to know that I was really done with Ruddy the 
hour I gave him back his ring. Saved me a lot of grief, 
Anne.” 

“ Have the Goddards gone away ? ” 

“ They’re going. Someone’s bought Woodlawn. Myrrh 
told some casual acquaintance on the train that they were 
going to a smaller place . . . Minneapolis, Omaha, 

Fargo. I don’t know where. She said Paul wasn’t the 


352 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

calibre to make a dent in Chicago. It’s all over Wynville, 
what she said. I think the cycle has begun again.” 

“ Cycle ? ” 

“ It’ll take about a year. Row . . . reconciliation. 

He was of the calibre to endure the country. She couldn’t.” 

“ By which you mean ? ” 

" I don’t know that I can put it into words. I mean that 
there is a hard irony about placing yourself against these 
wind-sharpened fields, in the light of this sunshine. It 
shows you up. There’s nothing here to put between your¬ 
self and your own soul. Geoff said that once and it’s true. 
Myrrh could hide from herself in town, behind the hurry 
and the unconcern, and I could. But out here, it seemed to 
me that the smallest things stand out . . . the tiny 
things, the little mistakes that go to make up your bitterness, 
the secret weaknesses in your own heart. It’s too stark a 
background.” 

Anne’s eyes rested on Barbara’s face where the autumn 
sunlight fell greedily, caressing her throat and hair. 

“ You don’t like it, Barbara.” 

“ Yes. I do like it. I’m just a trifle awed by the aus¬ 
terity of these open spaces . . . but I like it. I’ve 
found my job out here. We never thought of this, did we, 
all the years we were occupied in planning my career? 
Books and music, perhaps, but not . . . petunias. 
Not digging in the earth. I like it. I like the outdoorness 
of it and the hard work.” 

“ I know.” 

“ Heart-warming, work is, Anne-dear. Gives you zest 
and appetite for living. I’m going down to the State U 
this winter and study . . . strike out for myself,” she 

added stiffly. “ There’s no reason for staying on here at the 
Little House ” 

“ When,” Anne asked casually, “ is Geoffrey coming 
back ? ” 

“ I . . . never told you about Geoffrey, did I ? 

Geoff’s coming back wouldn’t make any difference with 
working, Anne. This is mine, my job, part of my own 


353 


THE LITTLE HOUSE 

life; and Geoff would be the first to understand. . . .” 

She went on in a voice that was like some deep, slow-mov¬ 
ing stream. “ But I think, perhaps, he’ll never come back. 
I try not to think about Geoff. It . . . undoes me. 

He’s gone away, Anne. He’s left me. And I ... I 
can’t go seeking him. I’d like to. I’m brash enough al¬ 
ways to want to push ahead and do something. The hard¬ 
est thing life ever gives me to do is just to stand still and 
wait. But this time I must wait. Until . . 

“But do you want him back, Barbara? You’ve worked 
his crop. You’ve done all that you need to do, haven’t you? 
Unless you want him back?” 

“You think it’s Ruddy still? I suppose if one believes 
hard enough that only one love comes in a lifetime, one 
can make it true. But why should it be true? If love does 
come again, why shouldn’t a woman be glad and open her 
heart to it ? Oh, Anne, I did love Ruddy. I did. But I had 
to let him go as you let Jim go and as Evelyn let him go be¬ 
cause I couldn’t go on. Love isn’t enough. I . . . I’ve 

come to think that that is Geoff’s reason for letting me 
go. . . 

She bent forward suddenly and hid her face in her arms 
folded on her knees. Out of them she heard her own broken 
voice. “ That’s what I’m afraid of, all the time. I have 
the dreadful secret fear that Geoff let me go, as I let Ruddy 
go, because he couldn’t trust me. He has a right to feel 
that. I wasn’t sporting. Never once in the two years we 
lived together. I just yammered and lay down on the job. 
I keep thinking if he’d give me another chance. . . . 

You go it all so blind, Anne.” 

“ Yes. You do,” Anne said. 

“ And that was what Ruddy always was saying to me. 
He said if I’d give him another chance. . . . And he 

wasn’t worth it. I knew it even when I loved him most. 
He’d misuse every chance that I could give him. . . . 

And even though he loves me Geoff may feel that, too. I 
think he’ll not come back while I’m here. But he’ll come 
back. . , . That's one reason I want to get away.” 


354 THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 

“ So that Geoffrey can come back ? ” 

“ And Mark. Mother Hale sent Mark away when Geoff 
went. She . . . she had some idea that it would be 

wrong for him to stay, that he wasn’t square with Geoff. 
He was. That was all unnecessary, all that hurt and waste, 
but she would not understand. She was so afraid that they 
were something not quite fine, something less than she ex¬ 
pected them to be. She cared too much. Your pride does 
get dreadfully mixed up with your loving, you know, Anne. 
They haven’t done an unworthy thing either of them. Mark 
can come back, when I’m gone. But Geoff . . • . I’ll 

have to tell you, Anne . . . there isn’t one of us, even 

Mark, or his mother who knows where Geoffrey is.” 

“ I know,” Anne said. “ He’s in Duluth.” 

“ Anne . . 

“ Did you think,” Anne asked gently, “ that Geoffrey 
would have trusted anyone who loved you less than he 
did?” 

They sat quietly, not talking for a little. Then Anne 
went back, as if she had remembered something Barbara 
had said. 

“ Perhaps it was necessary . . . that waste. I’ve 

lived longer than you and I’ve come to discover for myself 
what you find over and over between the lines of thinkers 
. . . Kant, Hegel, Spencer, even William James . . . 

that in any life which progresses there is always waste, an 
enormous waste . . . things that perish so that better 

things may survive. It seems hard and wicked at the time 
because we are going it blind. Evolution is a. blind process. 
Spencer postulates human life as physical and spiritual 
growth, bound to the past and connected vaguely with the 
future, attended by all the waste of human suffering, and de¬ 
veloping relentlessly the inescapable consequences of evil 
• • • and yet a process that unfolds in spite of all delays, 
bringing some good to fruition. It is only as the individual 
follows that process that he becomes effectual. We are 
made strong by what we grow beyond. . . . Life would 


THE LITTLE HOUSE 355 

be insipid enough if there were no struggle, nothing to over¬ 
come. . . 

Barbara turned her head to the side, resting it against 
the door-post and closed her eyes. Anne’s voice seemed 
far away. What had she to do with Kant or Spencer or 
William James? With a throb of her heart she remem¬ 
bered suddenly, the hardness, the gentleness of Geoffrey’s 
hands. . . . 


II 

Geoffrey was coming home. She woke to the joy of that 
early in the morning and carried it all day in the fields and 
the Little House, rehearsing over and over the things that 
she would say to Geoffrey, the answers, to the questions he 
would ask, the explanations, the exact phrasings. This 
was her day of expectancy and preparation. In the morn¬ 
ing, he would be at home. 

Mark came at twilight, and Barbara left them alone, Mark 
and his mother, and went out by herself into the November 
dusk. There was an odorous west wind across the fields 
that lay under the long, shadowy darkness and a star was 
tangled in a tree-top on the western horizon. She stood still 
at the foot of the steps below the knoll, listening to the 
sounds . . . a car passing on the highway, the baying 

of a dog, far-off across the river, the rustle of leaves stirring 
in the hollows by the road. She walked slowly, tired, won¬ 
dering a little at the emotions she had nursed. They seemed 
to matter so little ... all the fear, all the doubt and 
the pain gathered together. She had gone at things wrong, 
that was all, had attached to joy certain things, things that 
could not matter. . . . 

She thought of the fields that had seen so many sowings 
and harvests and would see so many more to come, in 
which she and Geoffrey had labored and which would be 
ploughed and cultivated through the years while they grew 
old and after they had left them forever. They had the 
power to dwarf human life and human hungers, those fields. 


356 


THE FLAME OF HAPPINESS 


After all she and Geoff mattered very little to the earth 
save as a part of that earth’s blind process of creation. It 
was only to each other that they mattered. Geoffrey mat¬ 
tered terribly to her. . . . Only because she loved him. 

She was going to love him all her life. She thought of it 
stretching ahead. She thought of living with Geoffrey 
through those years, through the thirties and the mellow 
forties, into middle life and age, bearing his children 
one after another, and having them grow up beside her 
. . . and the joy of it brought her to a standstill in the 

road, her hands over her face. “ Love . . .” someone 

had said once, “ the flame of life ... a necessity of 
the race.” It was the familiar image . . . fire, inex¬ 

tinguishable fires, red-embered at the heart, radiant with 
shifting color. . . . 

She took her hands away and saw a moving figure in the 
dusk, faintly outlined against the background of the fields. 
She caught her breath and let it out in a long sigh. There 
was a moment, sharp with waiting; but the next, she was in 
Geoffrey’s arms. She hardly saw his face, smiling mistily. 
They came together blindly and in silence. 

After that first instant, she was composed. The glad¬ 
ness of his presence stilled all the tumult in her heart. He 
did love her. He loved her. And as if that conviction 
found response in his own certainty, Geoff’s lips moved 
against her cheek. 

“ Barbara. You love me, . . .” 

She did not answer audibly. She saw his face glowing 
with a kind of beauty and the sight of it, the passion of 
his lips had such sweetness that she stood still to look at 
him. There was only that long look. The things she had 
meant to say were all unnecessary. They could talk im¬ 
mediately with magnificent casualness of the most insig¬ 
nificant things. . . . 

Geoffrey said, holding her at arm’s length, “Jolly rig- 
out you have on.” 

“ Working clothes. Like ’em? ” 

“ I like them.” 


THE LITTLE HOUSE 357 

“I didn't change. I never expected you, Geoffrey Hale, 
until to-morrow and I’ve worked like a dog since six this 
morning. After this, evenings, I’ll wear my pret¬ 
tiest . . ” 

“ You’ll never look any prettier, I’m telling you, to these 
old eyes.” 

“ Thanks,” she said demurely. “ Hard work agrees with 
me. Look at my hands.” 

But he did not look. He caught them, earth-browned 
and hard-fleshed and held them to his lips; and then, keep¬ 
ing them tight between both of his, he poured out a rush of 
words. 

“ That check . . . half-killed me. I’d been hoping 

. . . but when that came I thought it was the end. That 

you meant it to be the end; as if you’d paid a debt.” 

“ My debt,” said Barbara. 

“ As if I wouldn’t have given you twenty times that, if 
I could. As if it mattered.” 

“ It mattered to me. It was . . . kind of a symbol. 

Paying my debt out of money I’d earned. I wanted to 
clear the slate. Say you think it was . . . sporting, 

Geoffrey.” 

“ Sporting.” For the first time he grinned, a grin that 
came like St. Swithin’s rain, doubtfully but with the prom¬ 
ise of more to follow. “ Life’s going to be . . . great, 

Barbara, and it’s just beginning.” 


THE END 


















































































































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